Long March Project – the Great Survey of Paper-cutting in Yanchuan County

The Great Survey of Papercutting in Yanchuan County was a social project, mobilising contemporary artists and grassroots culture, sending art cadres down to the countryside and drawing together artistic and sociological mechanisms to undertake a comprehensive survey of papercutting across the entire county, the result of which was a sample analysis of the state of local folk art that was later showcased in a large-scale exhibition. At the same time, The Great Survey of Papercutting was itself an artwork, it was made by members of Long March Foundation and Yanchuan government officials, and by the more than 15,000 papercutters and 170,000 residents in the county who participated in the survey but did not practice papercutting themselves. In 2006, the second phase of the project commenced, “Yanchuan County Middle and Primary School Paper-curring Art Curriculum”.

Project Content

Related Exhibition: 

Amateur (San Francisco, 2008)

27th Bienal de São Paulo — How to Live Together (São Paulo, 2006)

CLASSIFIED MATERIALS: Accumulations, Archives, Artists (Vancouver, 2005)

The 5th Shanghai Biennial: Techniques of the Visible (Shanghai, 2004)

2004 Taipei Biennial (Taipei, 2004)

Related Discourse:

“Long March Project: The Great Survey of Papercutting in Yanchuan County” A Case Study