Garden 2007

Chen Quilin is a multidisciplinary artist who explores notions of displacement, memory and social injustice to comment on the scale and pace of change in contemporary China. The video work Garden shows a group of migrant flower sellers moving through the streets of Chengdu to deliver bouquets of artificial peonies to multistorey apartments built along the banks of the Yangtze River — an area affected by flooding and destruction caused by the Three Gorges Dam hydro-electric project. Known as the 'flower of riches and honour' in China, the peony is used symbolically in Chinese art to signify the fragility of life and its potential for renewal. Unlike static arrangements of flowers that often feature in traditional still lifes, in Garden the vases of peonies are mobilised — carried by hand. This symbolic gesture reflects the tensions between tradition and modernity caused by the rapid commodification of land as a product of China’s constant economic growth.