East of Que Village, Yang Fudong
East of Que Village, Yang Fudong, 2007.
Yang Fudong trained as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, China. At the end of the 1990’s he opted to trade painting for the media of film and video and soon became one of China’s most important contemporary artists. Fudong has twice taken part in the Venice Biennial (2003 & 2007), and his work has also been exhibited in Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Castello di Rivoli.
East of Que Village centres on an untamed and untethered pack of dogs, surviving at the most basic level of existence, in an arid, desolate, and unforgiving expanse of northern Chinese landscape. A handful of humans also appear, engaged in their own dogged battle for survival.
The work questions the value of life in contemporary China, and the desires an individual has a right to expect from his or her existence. It is perhaps Fudong’s most personal film to date, drawing on the bitter and cold feelings that he associates with the rural China of his childhood, and which embody for him a sense of isolation and loss that is increasingly present within society.
Here the film is exhibited at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium.
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A
History of Our World 
these are fantastic images. a great artist