Beijing Besieged: Wang Jiuliang's Urban Ecology Unhinged

Wang Jiuliang's photography will be on display at UC Berkeley.

While China's rise, and its immense challenges, commands world attention, less light has been shed upon the colossal problem of waste generated by a burgeoning population, expanding industry, and rapacious urban growth. Photographer Wang Jiuliang turns his lens upon the grim spectacle of garbage, excrement, refuse, and wreckage heaped upon the landscape that surrounds China's mega-metropolis, Beijing. Eeking out a precarious and hazardous living within are the rag pickers, mostly rural migrants, who struggle to maintain familial and cultural structures amid the bleakest of occupations. In this exhibit we see the desecration of once-vital farmlands and rivers in the shadow of the new China's gleaming cities and planes and super-trains; the unholy cycle of construction's consumption and waste, and poignant images of the daily lives of the gleaners who toil at their own peril.

A symposium in conjunction with this exhibit, "The City Besieged by Garbage: Politics of Waste Production and Distribution in Beijing," and screening of Wang Jiuliang's documentary film "Beijing Besieged by Waste," will be held on Monday, April 11. An Artist's Talk with photographer Wang Jiuliang will be held on Tuesday, April 12, at 4 p.m.