Gigantic task

Chinese fashion designer's installation art aims to raise awareness about wildlife, Cheng Yuezhu reports.

A life-sized elephant, wrapped in denim with wrinkles and wounds, reveals bones of steel and a red fetus dangling from her belly. A calf walks beside her, blood washing down its light blue skin.

This is the installation art piece, entitled Maasai Mara, which was displayed at the Beijing Exhibition Center recently.

The artwork has been created by Liang Mingyu, who visited the wildlife reserve in Kenya in 2015.

Liang, born in 1956, became a fashion designer in 1989, and worked as the chief designer for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

She is currently a professor at China's Southwest University and a council member of the China Fashion Association.

To fashion critic Yuan Ze, Liang is "a pioneer in Chinese fashion design"; to artist and critic Nie Changshuo, Liang's works "bring China's ancient and rich cultural traditions to the contemporary fashion platform"; and the late professor of the University of Oxford Michael Sullivan had called Liang the "first person in China to establish fashion design as a serious art form".

While her previous works focus on a modernistic expression of traditional Chinese culture, in particular the ethnic Bayu culture from Liang's hometown Chongqing, her latest work is infused with a concern for the environment.

Liang's inspiration for the installation came after she accepted an invitation from her friend Zhuo Qiang (known as Xingba), to visit Africa in 2015, where he has been working on animal protection and research. Setting foot on the vast expanse of the Maasai Mara, Liang felt she understood the predicament of wild animals, and decided to create an installation of elephants to raise public awareness.