What do you call an unlikely conclave that includes a minority Naxi calligrapher from a potato-growing hamlet in Yunnan, an intrepid mountaineer from urban Sichuan whose paintings conjure the inner life of alpine peaks, and an emerging poet from Beijing?
Why, the “Walking China: Stories Yet Untold” art and storytelling exhibition in Shanghai, of course.
On May 20, the Out of Eden Walk unveiled its first multimedia collection of paintings, videos, sketches, photography, songs, and even cartoons produced by the talented local walking partners who make our long, zigzagging foot journey across the globe possible. Together with artists encountered along the walking trail, this one-of-a-kind exposition fuses fine art and storytelling, and is hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts at New York University-Shanghai. The event has been more than two years in the making. But the notion of highlighting the contributions of the remarkable people who actually make this years-long walk possible dates to the very first dusty steps of the journey, in Ethiopia.
Ethnic Bai singers Zhang Taiying and Li Genfang perform at the opening of the exhibition
in Shanghai.
Paul Salopek
The Out of Eden Walk recently strode past its 10th anniversary milestone on a global trajectory that retraces the pioneering humans who roved from Africa to South America during the Stone Age. Along the way, we’ve tried to avoid framing our 24,000-mile stroll as merely one storyteller’s journey. Instead, we celebrate the rich personal narratives of scores of walking partners (for these amazing individuals are far more than mere guides or translators) who often choose which rivers to cross and, indeed, what stories to tell.
Yet there remains a walking revelation linked to another profound and collective human quality—and partner contribution—more inward, and often ineffable, than journalism: making art.
Michelle Yeonho Hyun, director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, checks textiles
at the gallery printed with poet Li Wan’s work.
Paul Salopek
The compulsion to grapple with Big Questions through art is probably older than the ancient wanderers the project is following—early anatomical Homo sapiens. (Are 45,000-year-old ocher daubings of pigs or hundred-thousand-year-old carved abstractions art?) As the “Walking China” exhibition attests, this line of human questioning continues.
Among the 12 Chinese artists and storytellers featured in Shanghai is poet Li Wan, who tramped along with the Out of Eden Walk in the rainy hillsides of Sichuan. She wrote of an old farmer who became lost while guiding us in a forest:
Among the bamboos
his lightly rusted sickle
dissolves our experience
as if we are opening eyes
that are already opened . . .
And self-taught naturalist and sketch artist Zhang Qinghua, who hiked 300 miles through Yunnan, notes paradoxically that, when it comes to observing the world creatively, it’s best not to focus simply on drawing but to be more broadly alert, like a hunter: “If you are looking for something while walking, you may start neglecting other important things.”
A visitor examines drawings and collection boxes made by naturalist and walking
partner Zhang Qinghua.
Paul Salopek
Other contributors include video artist Cheng Xinghao, who scaled the old tea trails of the Erlang Mountains; ethnic Bai singer Li Genfang; conceptual artists Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun, who “closed the gap” by walking a 52-mile stretch of Out of Eden Walk trail abandoned because of Covid policies; and talented others.
“A walk is not only a walk,” co-curator June Ke writes in her introduction to the “Walking China” exhibition. “It can also be a ramble through time, a quest for hidden truths, and an embodied approach to listening and storytelling. In this exhibition, walking becomes a method of uncovering ecological and technological layers, a way of traversing invisible borders, and a way of registering China’s spiritual journeys and history’s lingering footfalls.”
Co-curator June Ke included the past 10 articles about the Out of Eden Walk project
published in National Geographic magazine.
Paul Salopek
Ke chose the subtitle “Stories Yet Untold” as a nod to the perceived artistic silences that abide in less visited and considered corners of China. But it might also be taken as apt metaphor for all of us walkers and creators, as we each step into a collective future roiled by uncertainty, yet bound by mutual dependence.
The launch of the “Walking China” exhibition in Shanghai was attended by nearly a thousand people and will be open to the public at the Institute for Contemporary Arts until August 12. We are hoping it becomes a prototype for future walking-based art and storytelling exhibitions to be hosted in each of the 13 countries that lie ahead on the Out of Eden Walk’s trail to our species’ Land’s End, in Tierra del Fuego.
