In the age of anthropocene, the violent destruction of forests is one of the defining characters of our societies. Interestingly, forests are also deeply desirable for the fast expanding urban environment in the current global context.
In the photographic project Forest, the British-Chinese artist Yan Wang Preston spends eight years (2010-2017) investigating the politics of recreating forests and ‘natural’ environment in new Chinese cities. In Chongqing, China’s largest metropolis with thirty-million people, a policy of having a ‘Forest City’ is implemented. While saplings are a common choice, hundreds and thousands of mature trees are also purchased and transplanted into the city to make ‘readymade’ forests. Often the trees become trophies, decorations and a commodity to raise property prices with. Their prices depend on their rarity, size and age. Their origins include demolished villages, newly deforested areas and beyond. Their futures are uncertain.
In Haidong Development Zone, Dali, Yunnan Province, a small rural area is being urbanised systematically to create ‘an international leisure town and an ecology model town’. In doing so, the top soil of the entire area is replaced by a type of red semi-artificial soil, which forms the base for introduced, mostly non-indigenous plants, including thousands of mature trees. Meanwhile, green plastic netting is used to cover everything unappealing to the eye, from construction wastes to disused quarries. The town’s objective here has shifted from an ‘ecological’ concern to a cosmetic one of trying to be visually green. By 2017, seven years into its construction, Haidong is still a ‘ghost’ town without permanent residents.
Yan Wang Preston started the project in Chongqing by following the developments of the transplanted old trees, the concrete city and its people for eight years, documenting the changes, dramas and lives in the city. She then developed the project to Haidong by portraying the bizarre and wildly-coloured ecology-recovery landscapes. On the way, a series of stories are collected and narrated, raising questions towards the complexity of urban reforestation and nature re-construction in contemporary era.
Forest won the First Prize, Syngenta Photography Award in 2017 and has been published as a monograph by Hatje Cantz in 2018. It is also the winner of 2019 Sony World Photography Awards Professional Landscape category.
More information: www.yanwangpreston.com
