Moving Rainbow

Piece Description:

Text: Xiong Wenyun

Piece Description:

From 1998 to 2001, artist Xiong Wenyun visited Tibet seven times, implementing the comprehensive art project “Moving Rainbow“ along the Sichuan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet highways. Throughout this long-term and large-scale project, Xiong integrated conceptual, performative. and environmental interventions. Moving Rainbow sees the artist covering trucks with colorful tarpaulin canvas, then sending these envoys along the 1,400-kilometer Sichuan-Tibet Line. Along the route, the artist and her team got out to paint tree stumps with bright colors, bringing attention to deforestation occurring amidst rapid economic development. Over three years’ time, Xiong Wenyun created 200 colorful tarpaulins, persuading truck drivers heading into Tibet to participate in becoming part of the ‘moving rainbow,’ then organizing a ‘rainbow team’ to go deep into Tibetan areas, promoting the protection of this plateau environment, finally reaching the Everest base camp.

Text: Zhong Ting

“The revelation of this world is in the wilderness—this may be the hidden connotation of the wolf’s howl, which has been understood by the mountains, but remains very little comprehended by man.” (Aldo Leopold) The disappearance of the wolves does not mean paradise for the hunter. When the shepherd kills all the wolves, it inevitably means that he will need to take over the wolves’ role to avoid the proliferation of sheep along with ecological imbalance. The ecosystem has its own balance, in which human beings are hunters and sheep. Artist Xiong Wenyun takes over the work of the wolves, even if she did not intend to do so at the beginning of her creation, which was inspired by Mani Stones at the entrance of the Valley of Kings (Tibet). She was deeply impressed by the fact that these stones, large and small, contained an aura of life, and thus, in the interplay of heaven, earth, and human beings, she stepped into the creative process of Moving Rainbow. Starting from an instinctive emotional impulse, she painted colors on the stones, feeling the joy of blending things together with herself, then externalizing an inner sensual power within the artistic practice of “a fusion of feelings with the natural setting,” triggering her own and even society’s extensive concern about indiscriminate deforestation. This process embodies a “butterfly effect,” where small actions lead to all-encompassing change. As the artist has said, Moving Rainbow connects originary nature with modern civilization. She often feels the contradiction between the two, and that she is caught between these two trajectories of the human soul. This contradiction may be the reason why Xiong Wenyun shows the remarkable power of yin and yang in her abstract paintings. This flowing state of life in nature continues throughout Xiong Wenyun’s artwork, revealing interconnections of healing power between nature, culture, the body, and our inner spirit.