MONA(Museum of Old and New Art) is pleased to present internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen’s iconic installation work,Washing River,as a feature of the 2014 Dark Mofo festival program.

Dark Mofo is MONA’s annual winter festival, featuring a program of large-­‐scale public art, food, music,light, film and noise. Central to each Dark Mofo is a major public artwork, which is free to the public. This years’ presentation of Washing River will be a highlight of this public program, and forms part of MONA’s ongoing China Project,launched in 2013, aimed at building ongoing exchange and partnerships with China’s contemporary arts world.

Yin Xiuzhen, a luminary of Chinese contemporary art, will be visiting Hobart this winter to present her seminal work, Washing River, on the Hobart waterfront.

This staging will be the latest iteration of a project she first 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 passers by to help wash the blocks of ice – a symbolic act that has rich parallels with ritual baptism.

Now, on the lip of Sullivans Cove, Yin will construct the ice wall again – this time using water from the nearby Derwent River (another polluted river). Yin will invite passersby to engage in the work by taking up a mop and washing the wall with river water. As they do, the dirty water is symbolically cleansed, and the ice slowly melts and returns to the river. Environmental issues such as water pollution present a universal challenge for countries east to west, and Yin’s work seeks to engage the Hobart community in a participatory exploration and examination of this issue within their own local context.

Yin Xiuzhen’s artwork on the Hobart waterfront will also be given a new interpretation, as footage of its installation, washing and melting will be screened in the TMAG Bond Store Basement. The footage will be on display from Friday June 20 until the close of Dark Mofo on June 22.

Yin Xiuzhen, Washing River, 2014 
Opens 1pm Thursday June 19 Continues until ice melts Hobart Waterfront,FREE

Washing River, 2014, exhibition, video Friday June 20, 10am-­‐5pm Continues daily Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG),FREE 

Presented by Detached and Dark Mofo, supported by Pace Gallery Beijing.