Making and Deconstructing Mythologies in Yun-Fei Ji’s The Three Gorges Dam Migration (2010)

Abstract

In 1996, the Chinese government commenced construction on the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) in Hubei. While this was touted as a success in the movement toward modernization, at the same time 1.5 million people were displaced from their ancestral homes and the environment was irreparably destroyed. This paper explores the way contemporary Chinese artist Yun-Fei Ji’s 2010 work The Three Gorges Dam Migration unveils the environmental degradation, powerlessness, and propaganda involved in the construction of the TGD. While the work was created between 2008-2010, it is based on a scene from 2003 in Ji’s memory; as such, this paper considers the social, political, and economic situations of both 2003 and 2008. I argue that specific moments in these years – such as SARS, the recession, and the Beijing Olympics – simultaneously bolstered and deconstructed mythologies of modernization in China; Migration reflects these deconstructed mythologies by retelling a narrative alternative to the propagandistic mythos of the success of the TGD.