Curator Explores Ecological Art Through Sacred Mountain Landscapes and Indigenous Knowledge

Writer and curator Yuan Fuca reflects on her journey into ecological art, beginning with a 2019 residency in Sabah, Malaysia, which coincided with Indonesia's announcement to relocate its capital to central Kalimantan. This experience prompted her to reconsider spatial politics and ecological crises in marginal zones. She encountered artist Yi Xin Tong's work 'The Birth of Julung-julung: The Aquatic Dragon' (2019–2021), an HD video and percussion instrument piece inspired by a dragon-like fish, which connected ocean, mythology, and the body, drawing attention to Borneo's sacred peak. Since 2020, Fuca has traversed the Hengduan Mountains in southwest China, engaging with Indigenous cosmologies of the Lisu, Nu, and Derung peoples, who view mountains as sources of language and time. She discusses artists like Zhao Yao, whose 2016 work 'Spirit Above All' involved unfolding a large piece on Senggaiga Mountain with local community assistance, and Tong Wenmin, whose performances use plants and bodily movement to create sensory experiences of landscape. Fuca references anthropological work by Anna L. Tsing on the Meratus Dayaks and critiques by Glen Coulthard and Eve Tuck on Indigenous sovereignty, arguing that ecological art should move beyond representation to embrace embodied knowledge and co-dwelling. In 2025, she participated in the 'Changbai Spring' residency, exploring Changbai Mountain's role as a water source for Northeast China's rivers, linking hydrological functions to sacredness through examples like Bali's Subak irrigation system. Fuca concludes that water structures knowledge and governance, with the sacred emerging from relational practices rather than abstract symbolism.