Sophia Hirst, Class of 2024
Environmental Studies and Chemistry
Dmitri Baltermants, View through One of 138 Tunnels Built through Mountains in the Railroad Track-Laying Project, Tyan-Shuy City, 1980–1989. Gelatin silver print. 2016.46.17
Artists Yun-Fei Ji and Dmitri Baltermants both explore how humans reshape landscapes in the name of modernization. However, they evoke contrasting ideas about industry and progress. In Baltermants’s photograph of the Tianshui railway in northern China (not dated; printed 2003), the workers are front and center, highlighting the human power needed to complete this ambitious task. Newly laid tracks stretch into the distance, and the tunnel’s smooth arch encloses the mountains in the background, presenting nature as the canvas for an improved national infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ji’s scroll Three Gorges Dam Migration (2009) references China’s largest hydroelectric plant, although the dam itself is actually absent. Instead, the scroll chronicles the project’s civilian and environmental consequences: a seemingly endless procession of displaced people, at once stylized and intimately detailed, passes through the soon-to-be flooded landscape.
The different perspectives these two artworks bring to similar subject matter remind me of the perspective shifts I have experienced while pursuing environmental studies. Everything I have done in ES at º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ orbits the same core questions: how can we understand the challenges facing our changing planet and its inhabitants? How do we address them effectively and equitably? By considering these big questions through different disciplines, we can grasp the complexity of contemporary environmental issues in a way that takes advantage of everyone’s strengths. We learn from each other in the process, much like how as I learned from my co-curators’ points of view in developing this exhibition.
Yun-Fei Ji, Three Gorges Dam Migration, 2009. Watercolor and ink on mulberry paper and silk. 2021.16
At the beginning of this process, I was unsure of how I fit into the group of aspiring curators. As a chemistry coordinate major, my study of the environment tends to focus on material processes instead of abstract concepts like spirituality or the sublime, and analyzing art felt entirely out of my comfort zone. Once the curation progress got underway, however, I found that I was able to draw on my overall academic background in sometimes unexpected ways. The works I chose for this comparison, as well as many others in the exhibition, examine how advances in science have mediated human relationships with nature. This is especially visible in Baltermants’ photograph, where the mountainside tunnel indicates the use of either boring machines or explosives. I also reflected on how technology played a role in each artist’s choice of medium, from traditional woodcut to film photography to digital composition. Other connections were entirely unrelated to science—my affinity for the Three Gorges Dam Migration scrollwas born from the single semester of printmaking I took in the fall of my sophomore year. I have found that thinking about human-environment interactions from a holistic point of view informs how I engage with chemistry more than the other way around. When I study science, I am less inclined to think about the principles I learn in isolation; instead, I find myself wondering about their broader applications.