Reaching for utopia

Inspired by the words of ancient poet Tao Yuanming, Xu Bing creates the installation Traveling to the Wonderland to depict Chinese utopia. Photo provided to China Daily

Chinese artist Xu Bing takes viewers on a journey, with a major new work in London. Mariella Radaelli reports.

Chinese artist Xu Bing celebrates the majesty of nature as the greatest force and resource given to humankind.

The pristine paradise depicted in Peach Blossom Spring by the poet Tao Yuanming (AD 365-427) resonates in Xu's major new installation, Traveling to the Wonderland, on show at the John Madejski Garden at the Victoria and Alfred Museum, London, until March 2.

The words of Tao, the pre-Tang Dynasty "poet of the fields", pulse through the ethereal landscape created by Xu, one of the most influential Chinese avant-garde artists. Xu has transformed the garden and its stone-paved oval with a surrounding water jet into a magical vision.

Xu visually evokes the text written more than 1,000 years before Thomas More's Utopia. Tao's idyllic village is a place one might only stumble upon by chance. It is hidden deep within a mountainous wilderness, where its inhabitants, protected from the outside world, live in harmony with nature.

Traveling to the Wonderland explicitly deploys elements of the Chinese utopia, and proves that the concept persists.

"I've always liked the idea of Tao Yuanming," Xu says. "I first read Peach Blossom Spring in high school, but I have continued to reread it through the years.

"Texts by ancient poets and scholars always provide me with new ideas and thoughts each time I read them.

"On the one hand, I was inspired by the water fountain at the V&A. It is a very precious spot — a kind of an oasis — in the big city. On the other, I chose this theme because I think most people don't feel that an ideal living environment exists at the present time."

When the fisherman, the protagonist of Tao's story, goes back to the village, he is unable to find the place anymore. "The route was lost. And no one ever found the way there again," Tao writes.