Anothermountainman 又一山人 - aka Stanley Wong - (born in Hong Kong in 1960) is an acclaimed designer and artist, albeit he insists not to be labelled as such. His Dun Huang on the Way Again (2012) series starts like a fairy tale: ‘Once upon a time, this used to be a place of prosperity…’. Dunhuang was indeed the most important node along the Silk Road, it represented the core plateform for international, economical and cultural exchanges for ages. Yet the fairy quickly becomes gloomy and puzzling.
Why these boards are put in such desolate areas? They strangely convey contradictory slogans, one encouraging civilians and soldier to invest in Dunhuang, the other forbidding the circulation, destruction or removal of materials from there. Does the outstanding history of the Silk Road turned into mere written traces lost in contemporary landscapes of China? Anothermountainman attempts to represent traces of an immaterial past confronting actual traces of men, who try themselves to impose a sense of order in a constantly shifting present. It seems Dunhuang had become a leftover site that is waiting for its rebirth, still a place that has been looked upon with a covetous eye. Such focus on Chinese script is not new to Anothermountainman for he has been travelling the world seeking for these words during almost fifteen years.
