Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings

Triple Canopy and Asia Art Archive in America present a virtual screening of recent works by the artist and filmmaker Bo Wang. The works deal with colonial-era exchanges between the United States, Britain, and China, contrasting them with contemporary scenes of international commerce, as characterized by industrial ports and special economic zones. Wang examines the nineteenth-century trade in opium, lacquerware, and indigenous plants, among other goods, which linked the three nations and was commonly depicted in paintings and ceramics of the time; later, these exchanges were taken up by Hollywood in movies like Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) and Tai-Pan (1986).

In his films, Wang considers the spatial reorderings and epistemological reclassifications accompanying the West’s imperial incursions—as well as the immense profits garnered, particularly through the opium trade. With an eye to the reverberations of these encounters in the present, Wang asks how people understand themselves and others through the circulation of goods, the filming of fictions, and the invention of systems to contain and categorize the wares, tales, and peoples of foreign nations.

The virtual screening will be followed by a discussion with Wang and Triple Canopy senior editor Matthew Shen Goodman.

Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings is free and will be hosted on Zoom. Registration is required to receive the meeting link.

Register to stream this free event.

This public program was made possible through generous support from Jane Hait, a founding member of Triple Canopy Director’s Circle; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Research for Unknown States, Triple Canopy’s twenty-seventh issue, was made possible through a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft.