28/05/2026
Now on view: Yun-Fei Ji at MoMA, New York (US)
“The Empty City: Autumn Colors” is included in the current collection presentation “Down to Earth” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work was inspired by the enormous impact of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China. Over one million people lost their homes to build this 350-mile-long hydrologic project. Hundreds of villages and archaeological sites were submerged, drastically altering landscapes long celebrated in painting and poetry. Borrowing the language of classical Chinese landscape paintings, Ji depicts debris, toxic clouds, floating weeds, and the skeletal ghosts of the departed to reflect on the destructive effects of these transformations.
Image: Yun-Fei Ji, “The Empty City: Autumn Colors”, 2003, The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift, inventory number 1974.2005, © 2026 Yun-Fei Ji, courtesy MoMA New York, Installation view of the gallery “Down to Earth” in the exhibition “Collection 1980s–Present” (detail), photograph by Jonathan Dorado.