Chen Xiaoyang: Water, Villages, and A Living Museum in South China

SummaryIn this episode, we travel through South China’s river deltas and mountain headwaters around Guangzhou to follow the practice of Chen Xiaoyang (陈晓阳), an artist, visual anthropologist, and museum leader whose work treats art as fieldwork and public method. Moving from an urban village in Guangzhou to a headwater village in a protected water-source area, Chen’s projects show how exhibitions, teaching, and community collaboration can make buried ecologies visible again and rebuild civic capacity where rapid development has thinned everyday forms of belonging.Across three sites—Lijiao, Nanting, and Leming—we see dilapidated structures become living museums: ancestral halls, lineage halls, and an earthen farmhouse reactivated as spaces for memory, debate, skill-sharing, and collective revaluation. The episode closes by reflecting on care labor, women’s organizing, and the durability of social and ecological relations, especially in the face of real conflict and loss, including the dismantling of a key museum structure in 2023.Keywords Chen Xiaoyang, Guangzhou, urban villages, Lijiao, Nanting, Leming, Yuan Art Museum, watershed art, fieldwork, socially engaged art, ecofeminism, care labor, craft revival, participatory museum, art education, environmental humanitiesKey References Art China (艺术中国). “Jiaogui jihua——yiwei renlei xuezhe yan zhong de xiangcun zhenxing” 角柜计划——一位人类学者眼中的乡村振兴 [Corner Cabinet Project: Rural Revitalization in the Eyes of an Anthropologist]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/7697.html. 2018.Artron News (雅昌新闻). “Tianye zhong de meishuguan yu shanye zhong de yishujia” 田野中的美术馆与山野中的艺术家 [A Museum in the Field and Artists in the Mountains]. Sina News. https://gd.sina.cn/news/2018-12-26/detail-ihqhqcis0470483.d.html?from=qudao. 2018.Artron News (雅昌艺术网讯). “Yishu, xiangcun, gongyi: ‘Longyan’ zhudi jihua yishu zhan yu Conghua Leming cun kaimu” 艺术、乡村、公益：“龙眼”驻地计划艺术展于从化乐明村开幕 [Art, Rural China, and Public Good: The “Dragon-Eye” Residency Exhibition Opens in Leming Village, Conghua]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/4503.html. 2016.Chen, Xiaoyang 陈晓阳. “‘Tamen’ yu ‘women’: Yuan meishuguan de shehui canyu shi shijian” “他们”与“我们”：源美术馆的社会参与式实践 [“Them” and “Us”: The Socially Engaged Practice of Yuan Museum]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/9772.html. 2019.FutureLearn. “Case study: ‘Nanting Research.’” In Discovering Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China (City University of Hong Kong online course). https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/socially-engaged-art/0/steps/23891. Jackson, Shannon. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York: Routledge. 2011.Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2013.Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1990.People’s Daily Online. “Guangzhou Lijiao: yi zu 900 nian gucun de wenhua jiyi” 广州沥滘：一座900年古村的文化记忆 [Guangzhou Lijiao: Cultural Memory of a 900-year-old Village]. Phoenix Culture (ifeng.com). Simon, Nina. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz, CA: Museum 2.0. https://participatorymuseum.org/. 2010. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang