The Beijing exhibit, featuring selected works of the three award-winning artists, who have long been focused on ecological issues, shepherds audiences to gain such a perspective.

Cao and Chen, both in their early 40s, started their partnership in 2010, and in 2015, they launched the long-term art project Water System Project in Southwest China’s Sichuan province. The project is based on research, dialogues, and diverse collaborations reflecting on the historical changes and contemporary realities of the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a water conservancy project dating back more than two millennia.

Over the years, the duo has created several works within this project covering images, videos, installations, publications and workshops, realized through the collaboration between the artists and their partners, including locals, scientists from various disciplines, and environmental organizations.

For example, to create Observing Point (2019), part of the Water System Project, the duo collaborated with Wang Yizhong, a local farmer responding to the heavy deforestation on the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, where Dujiangyan is located. He began planting trees in 1998 and attracted many locals to follow suit. Over the years, nearly 80,000 trees have been introduced into the local landscape to safeguard the surrounding ecology.

Another important component of the project is the yet three-part Water System Refuge (2019-2022), which has been exhibited widely around the world, including at the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020-2021) and Documenta fifteen in Kassel (2022). The creation of the project has led the duo to travel extensively, mainly to the villages around the Minjiang River. With a non-anthropocentric perspective, they observed, researched and interacted with locals, geologists and scientists, to create videos, installations and publications, which shed light on local ecological wisdom and traditional techniques in reconstruction after the Dujiangyan area was hard hit by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008.

“By always learning from each other and exploring new relationships among materials, species and human society, we aim to create interdisciplinary and multi-species communities to generate alternative approaches,” Cao said at the exhibit’s opening on June 22.