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Journalism of Courage
Growing up in Taiping village to the south of China, near Shanghai, Lu Xinjian was accustomed to working very hard to help his family. It was on one of these days, when he had a lot to do, that a classmate asked Xinjian, “What is your dream?”
“I immediately replied that I wanted to leave the village. I wanted to go to the city. He was surprised, as my family and familiar surroundings were in the village but I was adamant on going away,” said Xinjian.
From March 16, an exhibition at the VHC gallery in Koregaon Park will showcase just how far Xinjian managed to travel. Titled InDNA, the exhibition features works made by Xinjian that are bird’s-eye views of cities but rendered in a series of lines, circles and other geometrical patterns that communicate the impression of a maze through which urban life meanders ceaselessly. The other artist at the show, Zhang Ji, looks at religious architecture, including Indian temples that he found online.
“Using a syringe to patiently apply as many as 120 tubes on a canvas, Ji’s work often resembles bas-relief sculptures. He references motifs from religious architecture, specifically mosques, synagogues and churches from Europe and the Middle East,” read the curatorial note.
Xinjian’s works look at several cities of India, a country he is yet to visit. Starting with Google maps to understand the layout of a place, he reads on the history and stories associated with the area. Works on Delhi focus on roads and structures that radiate from the India Gate and the clusters that surround Red Fort, while Kolkata is almost bifurcated by a road into thickly populated parts. The works emphasise how closely people live in cities, which could be a metaphor for the world. “The world, right now, is a bit chaotic..It is sad to read the news. I don’t paint political images. I like harmony and works that inspire people. My works are always colourful and positive,” he said.
For Ji, religion is the true cognition of the world that ancient civilisation continues to this day. “Living in today’s modern civilisation, in the secular encirclement, religious architecture seems to be a sacred and mysterious place. The decoration of religious architecture is like hiding some kind of code, continuously emitting wonderful aesthetic energy,” he said.
He, too, has not been to India but learned its history more than 10 years ago. “I searched for a lot of ancient Indian temples on the internet. I choose the patterns containing strong aesthetic energy as the material I created, and then used my method to create these works,” he said of his works on display.
