On ecological island’s aesthetics and spatial practice: A case study of the MadeIn Art Museum on Chongming Island

The MadeIn Art Museum, an open-air art space remodelled from chicken factory ruins in the 1970s, is located on Chongming Island. A two-hour drive from the urban metropolis of Shanghai takes you to the rural environment of Chongming Island, where the MadeIn Art Museum sits at the intersection of contemporary artistic practices and the ecological narrative of the ‘ecological island’ (eco-island). This article proposes that the existence of the MadeIn Art Museum on Chongming Island demands an emerging cultural identity in the context of artificial spatiality and spectatorship. Through aesthetics that approach the sensitivity and perception of Chongming Island, the narratives of ecological value perform a cultural identity for both contemporary art produced by the MadeIn Art Museum and the ideologically imposed propaganda of the eco-island of Chongming. Ultimately, rather than emphasizing the meaning of the MadeIn Art Museum as an alternative art space, the article considers that Chongming Island itself embodies aesthetics in spatial practices that enable art to convey a sense of cultural representations and contexts of ecological aesthetics.