Regenerative Artivism

Meiqin Wang
  • 5.0 (3)
  • ARTS

Regenerative Artivism is a podcast about how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and shape more livable futures. Drawing on long-term field research in East Asia, with a strong focus on the Greater China region, art historian Meiqin Wang traces how socially engaged and ecological art grows from struggles over land and water, migration and memory, and the everyday work of care. Each episode is a guided case study of one practitioner or project, with close attention to process: how collaborations are built, what frictions they face, and what regeneration looks like when it is slow, contested, and material. Season 1 unfolds across six biweekly episodes, moving through watersheds, farms, soil practices, disaster recovery, and feminist and indigenous forms of repair. Keywords: socially engaged art; ecological art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; community art; environmental justice

Episodes

  1. 4D AGO

    Lo Lai Lai Natalie: Art, Farming, and Fermenting Futures in Hong Kong

    This episode of regenerative artivism travels to Hong Kong, one of the most densely built cities on earth, to spend time with the practice of artist and ecological practitioner Lo Lai Lai Natalie （劳丽丽）. Working between small farms on the urban fringe, fishpond landscapes in the New Territories, and multi-channel video installations, Lo lives what she calls a half farming, half X life that fuses cultivation, art making, research, and everyday survival. Through Sangwoodgoon, a farming collective born out of resistance to high-speed rail demolition, and works such as Glacier, Deep Flight, Voices from Elsewhere, Voices from Nowhere, The Days Before The Silent Spring, and the exhibition Give no words but mum, we explore how hands-in-soil experience reshapes what art can do. The episode follows Lo’s experiments with multispecies listening in fishpond ecologies, her use of fermentation as a way of thinking about collective life under crisis, and her attention to plants and domestic spaces as sites of more-than-human dependency. Along the way, we consider what regenerative artivism might mean in a city where land speculation, climate volatility, and political unrest are all part of the everyday weather. Keywords Lo Lai Lai Natalie; Hong Kong; Choi Yuen Village; New Territories; Sangwoodgoon; half farming half X; regenerative artivism; socially engaged art; ecological art; environmental humanities; community farming; fishpond landscapes; Tai Sang Wai; multispecies listening; essay film; Glacier; Deep Flight; Voices from Elsewhere; Voices from Nowhere; The Days Before The Silent Spring; Give no words but mum; Slow-so TV; fermentation; climate crisis; urban fringe ecologies Key references EcoArtAsia. “Lo Lai-lai Natalie (b.1983).” EcoArtAsia. https://ecoartasia.net/LLL/LLL_eng.html Hong Kong Art Gallery Association. “Lo Lai Lai Natalie Interviewed by Hayley Wu.” PDF. https://www.hk-aga.org/uploads/file/202410/Natalie%20Lo%20Lai%20Lai%20Interviewed%20by%20Hayley%20Wu%20Courtesy%20the%20Hong%20Kong%20Art%20Gallery%20Association.pdf   Lee, Christie. “Lo LaiLai Natalie 劳丽丽.” Artomity. https://artomity.art/2020/08/31/lo-lai-lai-natalie-%E5%8B%9E%E9%BA%97%E9%BA%97/  Lo, Lai Lai Natalie. Artist website. https://www.lolailai.com/about  Okano, Tami. “Half-Farming, Half-X.” Translated by Yuri Morikawa. Think Daily Report, Think the Earth Project. https://www.thinktheearth.net/thinkdaily/report/2008/08/rpt-40.html. 2008. Tomorrow Maybe / Eaton HK. “Give no words but mum.” Exhibition text. https://tomorrowmaybehk.com/lolailainatalie. 2020.  WMA. “Lo Lai Lai Natalie: The Days Before The Silent Spring.” Exhibition description. https://wma.hk/en/projects/the-days-before-the-silent-spring/. 2020.

    31 min

  2. JAN 20

    Wang Fangfang: Natural Art Pedagogy on the Loess Plateau

    In this episode, we follow Chinese artist and educator Wang Fangfang (王芳芳) from the artist village of Songzhuang on the outskirts of Beijing back to the loess hills of her home region in northern Shaanxi, and onward to the headwaters of the Yangtze River on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. After an early career inside the capital’s contemporary art circuit, Wang made the deliberate decision to leave the gallery track and devote herself to what she calls natural art education with rural and herding children. We spend time in her classrooms: a small elementary school in Yan’an where children draw trees and cows from lived experience rather than copying textbook images; mountain schools in Chongqing, where “emotional ecology” means paying attention to what it feels like to be a left-behind child; and tent classrooms and boarding schools on the plateau, where yaks, snow leopards, and Tibetan antelope are everyday neighbors. Along the way, we trace how her field sketchbooks grow into ecological atlases and the picture book Sa: Sanjiangyuan wild animals, and how her paintings weave together feminist care, Tibetan Buddhist imagery, and multispecies landscapes. Wang’s story offers a grounded example of eco-pedagogy and regenerative aesthetics: art education as a way of cultivating attention, confidence, and responsibility in places often treated as marginal. It also asks what it means, ethically, for an artist to reroute a conventional career toward long-term, relational work with children and communities whose ability to care for their own environments will shape future ecologies downstream. Keywords Wang Fangfang; natural art education; grassroots art education; eco-pedagogy; place-based learning; loess plateau; Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau; Sanjiangyuan; emotional ecology; left-behind children; rural schools in China; environmental justice; Green River NGO; children’s drawings; multispecies relations; ecofeminism; reproductive labor; care work; Tibetan Buddhism; regenerative aesthetics; environmental humanities; socially engaged art; Chinese contemporary art; community art; art education and ecology Key References  Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Ecological Protection and Sustainable Development in Sanjiangyuan.” Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 27, no. 4: 250–252. https://english.cas.cn/bcas/2013_4/201411/P020141121530046272124.pdf. 2013. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. 1970. Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. 1994. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. 1993. Qi, Min 齐敏. “Wang Fangfang: yong huabi wei pianyuan diqu haizi dakai yishu zhi men” 王芳芳：用画笔为偏远地区孩子打开艺术之门 [Wang Fangfang: Using Brushes to Open the Door of Art for Children in Remote Areas]. Wenhua yishu bao: Xin jiaoyu 文化艺术报新教育 [Cultural Arts Gazette: New Education]. September 7, B01-04. 2018. Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. 1988. Wang, Fangfang 王芳芳. Sa: Sanjiangyuan yesheng dongwu huiben 萨：三江源野生动物绘本 [Sa: Sanjiangyuan Wild Animals Picture Book]. Chongqing: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House. 2021. Xinwen Zhoukan 新闻周刊 [Newsweek]. “Benzhou renwu Wang Fangfang: hua shang Qingzang xian” 本周人物 王芳芳: 画上青藏线 [Person of the Week Wang Fangfang: Painting Along the Qinghai-Tibet Line]. CCTV / Tibet.cn. http://media.tibet.cn/video/news/20190610/1560154435850.shtml. 2019.

    29 min

  3. JAN 6

    Art as Environment: Wu Mali’s Watersheds, Kitchens, and One Cubic Centimeter of Land

    This episode introduces the practice of Taiwanese artist Wu Mali （吳瑪悧）as an early anchor for regenerative artivism in East Asia. Moving from a polluted suburban creek at the edge of Taipei to river basins, a former naval kitchen on Cijin Island, and finally a project focused on one cubic centimeter of soil, the episode traces how Wu treats art as environmental infrastructure rather than isolated objects. Listeners will hear how Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek turned a neglected waterway into a watershed commons through walking, mapping, school programs, and breakfast gatherings with residents and hydrologists; how river projects such as By the River, On the River, Of the River and Taipei Tomorrow as a Lake Again reframe Taipei as a vulnerable floodplain; how Cijin Kitchen and Cijin’s tongue use cooking and storytelling in a former naval dormitory to surface maritime labor, migration, and coastal change; and how To Reconstruct 1 cm³ of Land, It Requires a Centennial foregrounds soil timescales and micro-acts of cultivation. Across these cases, the episode situates Wu’s work within ecofeminist, community-based strategies that link environmental repair to everyday care, pedagogy, and local governance. Keywords Wu Mali; Taiwan; socially engaged art; community art; eco-art; environmental humanities; regenerative artivism; regenerative aesthetics; ecofeminism; watershed commons; Plum Tree Creek; Cijin Kitchen; Cijin’s tongue; To Reconstruct 1 cm³ of Land, It Requires a Centennial; river city; climate adaptation; soil and land; art and governance; public pedagogy Key references Bamboo Curtain Studio. “Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek.” Project documentation. Bamboo Curtain Studio Website. https://bambooculture.com/en/project/2004.html.  ecoartspace. “Member Spotlight: Mali Wu.” Online feature. ecoartspace Blog. https://ecoartspace.org/Blog/13030578.  Goto, Reiko, Margaret Shiu, and Wu Mali. “Ecofeminism: Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek.” Women Environmental Artists Directory (WEAD) Magazine. 2014. https://directory.weadartists.org/plum-tree-creek-action/. Harff, Amy Spencer. “Artist Series: Wu Mali, The Godmother of Taiwan’s Socially Engaged Art.” Eurasia Review. Last modified August 3, 2021. https://www.eurasiareview.com/03082021-artist-series-wu-mali-the-godmother-of-taiwans-socially-engaged-art-analysis/. Tung, Wei-Hsiu. “Art and Aesthetic Environmental Awakening at Plum Tree Creek.” The Newsletter (International Institute for Asian Studies), no. 76 (2017): 30. Tung, Wei-Hsiu. “From Social Art Practice to Environmental Aesthetic Awakening and Civil Engagement: The Case Study of Cijin Kitchen.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 7, nos. 2–3 (2020): 307–324. Wu, Mali and Bamboo Curtain Studio. “Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” Case summary for the Taishin Arts Award. https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-detail/2012/463.  Zheng, Bo. “An Interview with Wu Mali.” FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, no. 4 (2016). https://field-journal.com/no4/an-interview-with-wu-mali. Special note: Chinese names in this episode follow local convention, with the family name given first and the personal name second.

    29 min

  4. JAN 6

    Regenerative Artivism: Listening to the Work of Asian Women Artivists

    In this introductory episode, I lay out the core idea of regenerative artivism and the scope of the podcast. Speaking from southern California with my attention grounded in East Asia, I reflect on how art, care, and collective imagination help communities confront social and environmental injustice and craft/cultivate more livable futures in damaged places. Using the image of a threatened valley and the community-organized Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival (美濃黃蝶祭), I introduce regeneration as an ongoing practice rather than a single victory. I explain why Season 1 focuses on women artivists in the greater China region and why their often-overlooked work in creeks, kitchens, schools, villages, and resettlement sites matters for environmental thinking. I situate the podcast in relation to my own long-term field research and to the limits of academic writing, framing the series as a slow, seminar-like space for listening, critical reflection, and grounded imagination. The episode closes with an invitation to consider a place that matters to you, the damages it has absorbed, and the quiet forms of care already at work there. Keywords regenerative artivism; regenerative aesthetics, socially engaged art; environmental art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; Asia, East Asia; Greater China; community art; environmental justice; social justice; regeneration; care; multispecies relations; public pedagogy; art and ecology; women artivists Key References  Demos, T. J. Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016. ECOARTASIA. Digital Archive of Chinese Socially and Ecologically Engaged Art. https://ecoartasia.net/. Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Kester, Grant H. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Lerner, Steve. Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Puig de la Bellacasa, María. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Wang, Meiqin. "Ecology, Environmental Art, and Sustainable Community Building: The Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival as a Case of Environmental Activism in Taiwan." International Journal of Social Sustainability in Economic, Social, and Cultural Context 19, no. 2 (2023): 75–101. Wang, Meiqin. Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below. London: Routledge, 2019. Wang, Meiqin, ed. Socially Engaged Public Art in East Asia. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2022.

    33 min

  5. SEASON 1, EPISODE 1 TRAILER

    Trailer – Introducing Regenerative Artivism

    This trailer introduces regenerative artivism: Asian women’s creative strategies for social and ecological futures. I am your host, Meiqin Wang, an art historian working in contemporary Asian art and the environmental humanities. In this podcast, I explore how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and make damaged places more livable. When I say regenerative artivism, I mean projects that do more than protest from a distance. They help repair relationships between people, land, water, and more-than-human neighbors through work in creeks, kitchens, schools, villages, and many other places. In the first season, I will share six episodes focusing on women artivists in the greater China region, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Each episode spends time with one practitioner, moving slowly enough for the story and its questions to unfold. New episodes will be released roughly every two weeks. The introduction episode and the first case study will be available on January 6, 2026. If this resonates with you, I hope you will follow the podcast, perhaps pass it along to someone who might be interested, and join me in listening closely to what these artivists have to say.

    2 min

Trailer

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Regenerative Artivism is a podcast about how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and shape more livable futures. Drawing on long-term field research in East Asia, with a strong focus on the Greater China region, art historian Meiqin Wang traces how socially engaged and ecological art grows from struggles over land and water, migration and memory, and the everyday work of care. Each episode is a guided case study of one practitioner or project, with close attention to process: how collaborations are built, what frictions they face, and what regeneration looks like when it is slow, contested, and material. Season 1 unfolds across six biweekly episodes, moving through watersheds, farms, soil practices, disaster recovery, and feminist and indigenous forms of repair. Keywords: socially engaged art; ecological art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; community art; environmental justice

Information

  • Creator
    Meiqin Wang
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Regenerative Artivism
  • Show Website
    Regenerative Artivism