Pollution in China: Precious art from toxic waste
Baku, July 17 (AZERTAC). The readings, with ‘good’ defined by US standards, demonstrate the single most pressing issue facing China’s population today: pollution.
In this city shrouded in smog, where thousands go about their daily lives wearing masks to fend off the toxic fumes, air quality readings regularly reach hazardous levels. In January 2013 they went off the charts. Internet users dubbed it the “airpocalypse”.
Yet many of the country’s artists are finding inspiration in pollution - and are turning to art to highlight, to protest and, in some cases, to search for solutions.
In April 2014, Liang Kegang, 46, travelled to the south of France on a business trip. Shocked by the contrast between Europe and China, he returned with a glass of Provence air, stored carefully in a rubber-sealed jar.
Back in Beijing, Liang sold the air by auction for 5,250 yuan (£494). Clean air was now a marketable commodity. “I was half joking and also taking a serious stance about air pollution,” he says, speaking from his office in Beijing, where he runs an art museum.
Liang is not only concerned about his own health but the wellbeing of his two children. He grew up playing on the beach in the coastal city of Qingdao. His offspring have no such luxury in Beijing. They must stay indoors.
“At home, I close all the windows,” explains the artist, adding that his seven-year-old daughter suffers from a chronic cough and sore throat. “I have no idea how it will harm us in the future. I worry about it very much.”
Pollution is a double-edged sword. China’s breakneck industrialisation, played out in just one generation, has pulled millions out of poverty. Yet the same economic miracle has wreaked environmental havoc. It is not only the air: almost 60% of groundwater in China is contaminated, as is over 19% of farmland according to the country’s environment ministry.
China is the world’s top producer and consumer of coal, accounting alone for roughly half of global consumption. And there are no signs that the country has any intention of slowing down: despite pledges by the government to tackle pollution, development remains the top concern of the Chinese Communist Party. China is already the factory of the world, producing cheap goods consumed by the West. To illustrate this - and complete his artwork - Liang is planning to sell a jar of polluted Beijing air in France.
He wants to invite children from the capital to collect the air with him so that “behind each jar of air, there is a kid and a story”. Liang insists that the problem is a worldwide one: “When European people are living their lives environmentally, it is based on the suffering of the Chinese people.”
Daan Roosegaarde is one European artist trying to make a difference. Roosegaarde, who splits his time between Shanghai and the Netherlands, is not concerned with just one jar of air. Instead, he has ambitions to create an entire smog-free open-air ‘oasis’ park in Beijing.
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