Agriculture is the key to China’s growth. Although many first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai are extremely developed and westernized, most of the nation is rural countryside. Agriculture is still the most important economic sector employing more than 300 million farmers. Wang Lei looks at the evolution of China through the tools of agriculture that have predominately been unchanged for centuries.

This large installation, a dragon’s head made from farmer’s tools, is the center of attention in the exhibition hall. To create this piece for his graduation exhibition Wang Lei spent 6 months in the countryside of Henan province’s Yang Shao village. This site is one of the most important archeological finds in China famous for discovering agricultural tools from the early dynastic periods.

Although inspired by Xu Bing’s Aerial Pheonix, all of the materials used in Wang Lei’s installation are kept in their original form and each piece is well documented with numbers which correlate to where the tool is from and who owned it. This work is a year in the making and is accompanied by 3 large books of Wang Lei’s research.

This is a page from the large book documenting each tool and the farmer who owned it

Although Wang Lei is very young and just completed his masters, I have been following his career for a few years. Conceptually he is very strong and all his works are painstakingly crafted. The Experimental Department of CAFA never disappoints.

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