totemdongbay@gmail.com
For Dongbay, the age in which human beings could directly communicate with the natural world is rapidly disappearing. He observes that time now moves in a linear, irreversible direction, pulling all cultures toward a shared condition of hyper-connectivity and detachment. The internet and modern convenience have made the world smaller, but they have also flattened experience, turning travel, culture, and even spirituality into consumable forms of self-representation. Against this background, Dongbay’s work rejects both nostalgia and revivalism. Instead, he positions his artistic practice as an active inquiry into what fragments of ecological wisdom can still be preserved, transformed, and reimagined within the ruins of modernization.
His process often begins with immersive fieldwork. Dongbay travels to remote or peripheral regions where the continuity between land and life still holds, embedding himself within communities whose knowledge systems remain rooted in ecological coexistence. Through friendship, shared labor, and observation, he gathers intangible insights that forms of understanding that emerge not from documentation but from lived experience. He then translates these encounters into installations, paintings, and moving-image works that combine organic materials with urban detritus, spiritual symbolism with technological relics.
This synthesis forms the foundation of Dongbay’s guiding concepts of primitive futurism and ritual minimalism. In his work, primitive futurism imagines a world where ancient intuition and modern systems coexist, suggesting that technology and myth are not opposites but extensions of the same human desire for connection. Ritual minimalism, meanwhile, reflects his belief in stripping away excess to reveal the essential, creating spaces that hold both sacred and industrial resonance.
Beyond form, Dongbay’s practice is rooted in an ethical stance toward artmaking. He views art as a vessel for translating forgotten wisdom into contemporary language, not as aesthetic decoration but as a mode of inquiry and resistance. His installations, films, and writings often address the paradox of progress, how civilization’s pursuit of comfort and control simultaneously distances humanity from the raw forces that once defined existence.
In this sense, Dongbay challenges the logic of the “souvenir,” a modern condition in which global experience becomes a personal collection of cultural fragments. His works aim instead to generate moments of re-engagement to create spaces where the voices of land, labor, and spirit might still be heard amid the noise of the Anthropocene.
Through his ongoing research and artistic experimentation, Dongbay proposes that the act of awareness itself of observing, collecting, and reinterpreting what remains of our ecological consciousness can become a form of resistance. His practice continues to evolve as an open system, balancing scientific inquiry with spiritual reflection, and artistic process with the unpredictable rhythms of the living world.
Curriculum Vitae
Educations
2020 MFA, Pratt Institute, New York, USA
2017 BS, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
Media & Publications
2024 CarharttWIP, Online Interview, China
2023 Umay Art Project, Artist Talk, 798 Cube, Beijing, China
2022 4 Crimes To Individuation, Book Published, China
2021 Good Night Press, Online Interview, China
Exhibitions
2025 Pomnik Miru, Cerje, Nova Gorica-Gorizia, Slovenia. Group Exhibition, ART CIRCLE & URBAN JUNGLE
2025 1215 Gallery, Montreal, Canada. Group Exhibition, From Breath To The Dirt
2025 Villa Vipolže, Brda, Slovenia. Group Exhibition, Art Circle
2025 OneArt Gallery, Beijing, China. Group Exhibition, Dwelling In The Ideal Land
2024 NIKE Jaya Center, Shanghai, China. Group Exhibition
2024 ALL Space, Shanghai, China. Group Exhibition, On The List
2024 K66 Art Space, Shanghai, China. Group Exhibition, Resample
2023 Parkview Green Art Center, Beijing, China. Group Exhibition, Traceable
2023 798 CUBE, Beijing, China. Group Exhibition, De wereld Wat Met Handvat getembi lk?
2023 Baimiao Center, Beijing, China. Group Exhibition, The Trip Of A Skin
2022 Boomer Gallery, London, UK. Group Exhibition, Vogue | 5th Edition
2021 Streams Gallery, Hong Kong. Group Exhibition, Write 4 Fun