Christensen Distinguished Lecture | Qiu Zhijie

Mapping the World Project

Nearly a decade ago, Qiu Zhijie began to plot out intricate maps of the relationships among his various artworks. It was from this synthesis of research, writing, imagination, and action that the “Mapping the World Project” was born. In the hundreds of maps that have followed, the ink and brushwork of landscape painting outlines a coordinate system which condenses ideas, individuals, objects, incidents, and situations, weaving them together, and offering a possibility for understanding them in relation to each other.

The intelligently schematic nature of these maps has allowed them to serve as blueprints for various exhibitions, notably the Chinese Pavilion in the 57th Venice Biennale last year, which Qiu curated, and the recent Guggenheim survey “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (2017-2018) for which he created a monumental map that connected the works, artists, and historical milestones covered therein.
 

For the last ten years, mapping has served multiple functions in Qiu’s artistic practice: as self-conscious gesture, workflow chart, exhibition plan, intellectual exchange, political topology, and cultural research program. These maps ultimately reflect the myriad identities of their author: artist, educator, curator, theorist, and eclectic cartographer.

This lecture is made possible by a generous grant from Carmen M. Christensen

Image: Map of Utopia - People Claimed to Be Messiah Crowded History. Courtesy of Qiu Zhijie.

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