‘A Darkness Shimmering in the Light’: Frontier imaginaries, urban modernity and psychological healing in the contemporary Chinese moving image

This article explores how ‘the frontier’ has been reshaped by twenty-first-century Chinese artists as a psychologically reparative space which mediates the pressures of urban modernity. It begins by discussing how a geopolitical view of the frontier as a space of friction and flux has predominated in recent art production (as in OCAT Shanghai’s 2017 Jiangyu [Frontier] exhibition). It then moves on to consider three moving image artworks which instead depict the frontier as a subjective, experiential zone which can heal the urban psyche: Xiaolu Guo’s (2006) feature film Jintian de yu zenmeyang? (How Is Your Fish Today?); Liu Yujia’s (2023) gallery film Weiguang jian an (A Darkness Shimmering in the Light) and Cheng Xinhao’s short (2024) gallery film Qianzouqu (The Preludes). From Guo’s depiction of a human-centred frontier to the post-Anthropocentric visions we see in Liu and Cheng’s works, the article demonstrates how an alternate vision of the frontier as an (urban) fantasy of rural escapism has emerged in the twenty-first-century Chinese moving image.