One of a series of three works of the same period, this delicate work on paper is drawn from photographs Jia Aili took in the Hunnan province wasteland in 2006. The work encapsulates two central themes in his practice thus far, that of man’s solitary existence as he wanders through life’s struggles, with a romantic suggestion of the exploration of one’s inner psyche and inner world. The lone figures in this and all his other works point to a sad postscript to an apocalyptic chapter in the history of mankind. The wasteland is also another central and recurring motif in his work, reflecting the tension and growing crisis and state of uncertainty in China today, of this “lost generation” as referred to by Jia in TS Eliot’s seminal work The Wasteland.
