Artist's campaign to clean up Everest with public art activity

Artist Wang Yiming has felt the emotional pull of Mount Everest since his first encounter with the iconic mountain.

When Wang first went to Tibet and Mount Everest in 1987, he was completely taken by the impressive site. Since that first visit he has escaped the hustle and bustle of the metropolis and returned more than ten times to draw sketches.

Wang isn’t the only one fascinated by Mount Everest.

Since 1953, when New Zealander Edmund Hillary first conquered the colossal 8,848-meter mountain, nearly 100,000 people visit Everest Base Camp every year, leaving a great amount of rubbish, feces and even several hundred dead human bodies. 

The weak ecological system around Mount Everest made Wang initiate a special art project titled “Streamer: Revere the Nature and Love Everest.” The artist plans to transform the individual painting action into a charity event.

He invited artists, volunteers and children from all over the world to co-create 81 giant abstract canvases, of 15 meters high and 3 meters wide, to persuade people to stop climbing Everest. Some of the works were shown at Shanghai Art Fair held last week.

Born in Liuyang Hunan Province, Wang obtained his post-graduate degree at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and now teaches at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou.

Li Xiaofeng, one of China’s renowned art critics, also the curator of the project said, “Wang used to depict the landscape of Everest and Tibet, which ignited this public art activity. In my eyes, it is a quite meaningful on-going project that would evoke the thoughts of many Chinese contemporary artists of how to break the shackles on themselves towards fame and money, and how to fuse art into a public interest appeal, and how to inspire a higher level of Chinese contemporary art.”

According to Li, the remaining abstract canvases will be completed by 2019.

“The project will not only protect the environment around Everest, but raise the funds in cleaning up the rubbish there as well,” said Li.