Naxilandia

Naxilandia is a four channel video installation that features the rural villages of subsistence farmers from the Naxi ethnic minority in China, as they lived along the watershed of the upper Jinsha River (Yangtze) in the Yunnan Province. The  roughly 300,000 Naxi people are one of China’s 64 ethnic minorities; many which have remained largely autonomous due to the remoteness of the region from the centers of national government. Despite their proximity to Lijiang City, a tourism-driven major urban center in the region, the rural people primarily participate in self-sustaining economies like subsistence farming. The videos capture the changing work and environments of the Naxi people in a period of transition, one instigated by a governmental push to develop rural economies and to shift rural labor away from farming.