Tasmania | Washing River exhibition

Beijing artist Yin Xiuzhen has taken her time-based artwork, Washing River, to Tasmania. During Dark Mofo Festival 2014 Yin built a wall of ice on the Hobart waterfront, using frozen water from the River Derwent. Footage of the artwork’s installation, washing and melting is screened at an exhibition at Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery. Washing River exhibition at TMAG: 20 June - 6 July Yin Xiuzhen, a luminary of Chinese contemporary art, built a wall of ice on the Hobart waterfront as part of the Dark Mofo Festival. This is the latest iteration of a project she began in 1995, when she was shocked to discover the polluted condition of the Funan River in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. Yin assembled 10 cubic metres of frozen contaminated river water and asked people to help wash the blocks of ice – a symbolic act that has parallels with ritual baptism.

In Tasmania, Yin constructed the ice wall again earlier this month – this time using water from the nearby Derwent (another polluted river). People were invited to take a Chinese mop and ‘wash’ the wall with river water, symbolically cleansing the dirty water as the ice slowly melts and returns to the river. Read a review of the Washing River artwork installation and show in The Guardian Top image: Artist Yin Xiuzhen symbolically washes Tasmania's Derwent River. Photograph: Rémi Chauvin/MONA