The Xianyang River Flows Westward
By He Chi
The Xianyang River flows westward
I fish at Niangzi Lake
The Xianyang River – in Shimen County, Hunan Province—artist Deng Wei’s hometown – flows westward into the Xieshui River, which then joins the Lishui River. The area is steeped in numerous myths and legends associated with the river.
Niangzi Lake is an inland urban lake in Wuhan, Hubei Province, where Deng Wei now lives. It was originally named Liangzi Lake.
The westbound Xianyang River in the artist’s hometown has been there since eternity, which offered infinite cultural resources for Deng Wei’s painting and a spiritual landscape he draws inspiration from. Through its backward course, the river also embodies a revelatory image of a vital being that reverses against the currents of its era and environment.
Deng Wei’s painting practice is subversive, similar to the Xianyang River’s reverse-flow, unceasing day and night. Such a contentious stance manifests in his artistic language, through which the artist aims to break free from the canon of academic art training, turning instead to the aesthetic paradigms of Chinese folk art, in particular, drawing references from the revival and development of Buddhist and Daoist water-land ritual paintings. In terms of subject matter, he gradually withdrew from the influence of contemporary cultural trends, while tracing back to the origins of ancient myths and legends passed down through oral history; and the geographical, indigenous, and historical realities of his hometown. Although Deng is actively engaged in the everyday life of a modern metropolis, his sensibility remains reminiscent of an ancient recluse.
Fishing at Liangzi Lake—the largest urban inland lake in China, embodies this sensibility that compares Deng Wei to the ancient recluse such as Wang Wei in his Wangchuan retreat. It is a contemporary iteration of ancient myths of Deng Wei’s homeland: the self-mythologizing construction of the artist’s subjectivity. In this mythology that Deng Wei projects toward the future, Liangzi Lake becomes Niangzi Lake. *Translated from Chinese by He Xiao.
About the Artist
Deng Wei, born in 1978 in Shimen, Hunan Province, is of the Tujia ethnic group. As a graduate of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Deng now serves as a teacher at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts.
About the Curator
He Chi, born in 1978, Gansu Province. Graduated from the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts. He co-founded the Xiong Huang Group in 2007 and the Nanshan Painting Group in 2012. He was also a co-founder of the We Said Let There Be Space and There Was Space in 2012. He was co-editor of the ARTTIME magazine from 2012-14.
Deng Wei: The Xianyang River Flows Westward
