Cloud NOW | 展览作品「周滔：凡洞」

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From Minhougeqi Village in Fuzhou, to Menorca in Spain, from Fán Dòng in Shaoguan, to the sea of Inchon, from the foot of Dafu Hill, to the Sonoran Desert. Images and reality are constructing a topologic booklet. No scripts, no stories, the light became the protagonist, the landscape became the protagonist.

Here in Fán Dòng, the Hakka people have all moved away from the place where generations of their families lived. Before the execution of the new development, all  the villages on this land will soon be buried into continuous muck dunes. On the open grounds, there stocked huge piles of second-hand machines which would be resold in the southeastern countries. Estate investigation teams gathered in different groups, were talking about the potential prices of the land. After passing some huge muck dunes, between two higher muck dunes, the  hunters built their sheltered pits and bird traps in the air. They tied a bee to a  transparent string as it would lead them to the beehives hidden in the cracks. Fishermen even found a source of fish in the swamp that connects the  groundwater. The men and women in the giant ferroconcrete caves on the clouds were still chattering about the bullfrogs from lunch.

——Artist statement

Courtesy the artist and Vitamin Creative Space, ?the artist

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Born in 1976 in Changsha, Hunan Province, Zhou Tao studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and received a bachelor of fine arts in oil painting in 2001 and a master of fine arts in mixed-media studies in 2006. Currently lives in Guangzhou.

He received the awards including “The 46th Cinéma du Réel International Film Festival-Short Film Award 2024”, “FUGAS Feature Film Section - Jury Award”, DocumentaMadrid in 2018, the 1st Prize of the Jury of the Ministry, 61st Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in 2015 and the 1st Han Nefkens Foundation BACC Award for Contemporary Art in Asia in 2013.

Zhou Tao finds visual and narrative materials for his arresting film works in the places and communities he encounters, and the narration of the film is often developed from the accumulation of the encountered moments. There is no single entry to the practice of Zhou Tao, through often subtle and humorous interactions with people, things, actions, locations and situations, Zhou’s videos invite us to experience the multiple trajectories of reality—what he once called the “folding scenario” or the “zone with folds.” Although all of his footage captures actual scenes, the poetics of Zhou’s visual narratives dissolve the division between fact and fiction. For him, the use of moving image is not a deliberate choice of artistic language or medium, instead the operation of the camera is a way of being that blends itself with everyday life.