Black and White Zoo

Installation

Murals, tree leaves, football

600 x 400 x 900 cm

2005

The exhibition was a summarizing one after visiting England for six weeks. Cows, penguins, zebras, pandas and other black and white animals were painted on the wall of the gallery. They hid themselves in the camou?age style of paintings. The leaves from the local which were dyed with black or white color covered the whole ground and formed a pattern of a cow, and meanwhile, there was a football in the space. The cows were painted on other walls again. The sea routes drawn by a pencil among black blocks and battleship patterns in different time led the black blocks on the cows to become lands and islands on the map.

The information on the wall also included the historical material that Dutch people arti?cially bred the ?rst black and white cow, the documents about mad cow disease and the letters about rural construction and the problems of Chinese industrialization between En Houzhi (the creator of Dartington College of Arts) and Song Meiling, which were found in the local archive.

During the exhibition period, the footsteps of viewers walking around the space, especially their participation in playing football, gradually mixed the black or white leaves with original color ones together. Finally, the cow pattern on the ground disappeared totally.