T H I S PA G E : (Left) Mu, Lin, Sen Project, 2005-ongoing, by Xu Bing. Kenyan student drawings raise money for reforestation efforts.
(Right) Shangri-La: El Sueño Volatil (Shangri-La: The Volatile Dream), 2008, Marcos Ramírez ERRE. Video monitors serve as windows
into his interpretation of a Tibetan home. O P P O S I T E PA G E : Sapukay—Cry For Help, (upper right of frame), and Teko Mbarate—
Struggle for Life (lower portion of frame), by Rigo 23, made in collaboration with indigenous people in Cananéia, Brazil.
is projected along the ceiling, while two more play along one
wall. Just beyond this horizon of air and water, viewers can
make out the outlines of a town, a beach, the sea itself.
• • • • • • •
Xu Bing, a Chinese artist who chose to visit Mount Kenya
National Park, developed another model of exchange.
Together with the local NGO, Mount Kenya Trust, and >ve
di=erent primary schools near the park, Xu Bing created a
system that seeks to, quite literally, turn art into trees to further reforestation e=orts.
He began his calligraphy and drawing workshops in each
school by telling the following story: “Once upon a time there
was a boy named Shan who lived in a big forest. He had
never gone to school, and his only friends were the forest
spirits. . . . ” Shan wanted to record the beauty of his forest
for other people to understand and share. But how could he
do this? Shan discovered that by drawing pictures of insects,
blades of grass, and trees, he could bring them to life. Xu
Bing explained to the children that, like Shan, they too could
make drawings that brought new trees to Mount Kenya.
After concluding his lessons, Xu Bing left the students
and their teachers the materials they needed to keep making
drawings. The students’ works are scanned and auctioned via
a website that Xu Bing created for this purpose ( www.forest
project.net), that functions not only as a point of sale, but
also has information about each child, a means of exchanging messages with them, and other information on the proj-
ect. As the drawings are sold, the proceeds are directed back
to the Trust where they are used to purchase trees to plant in
the Mount Kenya foothills.
• • • • • • •
Other artists took more of their home contexts with
them, a sort of burden to be shared and then reimagined.
Marcos Ramirez ERRE lives and works in Tijuana,
Mexico, where his studio lies feet from the U.S.-Mexico border. He traveled to the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan
Protected Areas in Southwest China, where he was based in
the largely Tibetan town of Shangri-La, recently renamed as
such by the Chinese government to attract tourism attention.
The area—home to many di=erent ethnic communities and
a diverse array of animal and plant species in the surrounding Himalayan peaks, deep river gorges, and temperate
forests—is under staggering development pressure.
“I was a tourist, in a way, there,” he said, “but at least one
with a concern for the place. I related to my site because it
was a border town . . . populated with ethnic minorities, a
sort of extension of Tibet.”
Marcos’s piece for the show, Shangri-La: The Volatile
Dream, is a brightly painted and intricately carved interpretation of a Tibetan home, much of which was made with
Tibetan craftsmen in China and then combined with
Marcos’s own construction in San Diego and Tijuana. It feels
near life-size inside the gallery. The windows of the structure
are video screens, upon which loop images of daily life in
