Jiayi Gu's Artist Book Reimagines China-India Border Through Himalayan Instability
Jiayi Gu's innovative art project, "Shifting Lines, Silent Peaks," explores the intricate border between China and India, urging a reevaluation of territorial perceptions. The piece highlights the Himalayas as a dynamic ecosystem, illustrating the impacts of climate change through melting glaciers and shifting waterways. Departing from conventional cartography, Gu's book employs folds and overlays, integrating imagery of the mountains with the printed page. It also features a grid design with human figures, reinforcing the concept that borders are socially constructed. The use of a red thread symbolizes artificial divisions, provoking contemplation on the nature of boundaries.
Key facts
- Jiayi Gu created the project Shifting Lines, Silent Peaks: Rethinking Borders under the Shadow of the Himalayas.
- The project takes the disputed border between China and India as its starting point.
- The Himalayas are presented as an unstable organism with retreating glaciers and changing watercourses.
- The work is conceived as an artist's book, replacing map linearity with folds, overlays, and interrupted images.
- The project draws on topographical photography and Alighiero Boetti's conceptual maps.
- The binding features a red thread along the spine, suggesting division as a construct.
- Photographs include a monk absorbed by the mountain, a figure beneath barbed wire, and peaks vanishing in overexposure.
- The project does not aim to redraw a border but to question the line as a concept.
Entities
Artists
- Jiayi Gu
- Alighiero Boetti
Institutions
- c41 magazine
Locations
- China
- India
- Himalayas