Regenerative Artivism
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
9 episodes
Season 1 Closing: What Regeneration Asks of Us
In this short season finale, I reflect on what season 1 has been doing at its core: practicing a slower, more accountable way of paying attention. Rather than chasing crisis headlines, the season lingered with place-based creative work that oft...
Aluaiy Kaumakan: Weaving after the Storm
SummaryEpisode 6 follows the practice of Aluaiy Kaumakan, also known in Chinese as Wu Yuling (武玉玲), a Paiwan (排灣) textile and installation artist from southern Taiwan, and asks how weaving can become a method of cultural survival ...
Song Chen: Soil Artivism, Ritual Repair, and the Mythic Body
SummaryThis episode follows the Shanghai-based artist Song Chen (宋陈), whose practice treats soil not simply as an environmental theme but as a medium, a witness, and a moral problem. Beginning from the premise that urban life is d...
Chen Xiaoyang: Water, Villages, and A Living Museum in South China
SummaryIn this episode, we travel through South China’s river deltas and mountain headwaters around Guangzhou to follow the practice of Chen Xiaoyang (陈晓阳), an artist, visual anthropologist, and museum leader whose work treats art...
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 ...
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 Yan...
Wu Mali: 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...
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 ...
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 podcas...