Synthetic Totems: Fragments of the Anthropocene

Characterized by the impact of human activity, the Anthropocene is brimming with opportunities for rethinking our relationship with the Earth. As an artist and self-proclaimed eco-warrior, I guide viewers through a deep exploration of its intricate layers. I specifically create installations using fragments of both “nature” and “industry” to encourage curiosity at their entanglement rather than condemnation of their relationship.

My work is rooted in my childhood experiences of living and migrating in the industrial regions of Northeast China. There, the vitality of the earth rhymes with the relentless roar of machinery. This shaped my understanding of the earth’s dynamic yet scarred nature.

I often draw inspiration from traditional totemic symbols and visual systems that have historically linked communities to ecological wisdom.

Composed of recycled skateboard trucks, tangled electrical wires, and animal hides salvaged from poachers, I present Synthetic Totems. Its components are imbued with the remnants of industrial overproduction and ecological destruction. Weathered by use and abandonment, these fragments bear the imprint of a world shaped by ruthless production and plunder.

Synthetic Totem
280(L) x 250(W) x 80(D) cm
Recycled Animal Materials & Mixed Media
Traces, Group Show. Parkview Green Art Center, Beijing, China, 2024

This installation constructs a ritualistic space, using industrial waste and poached animal hides that collide. A skateboard frame forms the spine, securing wolf and sheep skins, while woven copper wire and human hair cascade to the ground, connecting the viewer to the work. The synthetic patterns on the animal hides re-establish a nomadic worldview within the context of industrial semiotics.

Primitive Futurism and Ritual Minimalism

My childhood was spent in towns shrouded in construction dust, the rhythm of factories echoing across the land. The discovery of oil changed everything. A town rose almost overnight from the swamps of the Northeast. People frantically chased wealth, transforming the wetlands into a glittering yet turbulent city, where ambition surpassed stability, expanding faster than the social or ecological foundation could support. Through the chaos and intoxication brought by sudden wealth, the city prospered in spite of its fragility. But, its vitality burned too quickly. As time passed and the oil wells gradually dried up, the land became desolate, leaving only empty streets and silent refineries, like a ship stripped of its soul, yet still echoing with the remnants of desire and decay. In those years that shaped the land, I saw its vibrant, resilient, yet incredibly fragile, ever-changing essence—the essence of a living, breathing entity.

My proximity to the vitality, trauma, and ever-changing state of the land guides me to constantly explore different materials for my creative work, from industrial waste, such as steel structures or cables, to natural materials, such as animal hides and human hair. The process of collecting these materials and their stories lays the groundwork for the emotions and logic I experience when working with them.

Weaving and combining, the process is like alchemy that spontaneously forms within me rather than a repetition or adherence to a pre-designed plan. As an artist, I play the role of creator: infusing new “souls” into physical forms, combining the hides that once belonged to wolves and sheep with human hair to create a reincarnation, blurring the boundaries between species. These hybrid bodies generate a spiritual space that is both primordial and futuristic, simple and complex, a kinship that transcends traditional boundaries.

Through the deconstruction and recombination of recycled materials, I synthesize Frankenstein-like creatures. These hybrid structures become dynamic fields of meaning-making, prompting us to consider whether industrial residues can foster a new connection between us and the earth. Through this ritualistic practice, I aim to explore the core concepts of “primitive futurism” and “ritual minimalism.” The former seeks continuity between ancient intuition and modern systems, viewing mythology and technology as two poles of the same life impulse. The latter, by removing superfluous narratives and forms, reconstructs the ritualistic sense and spiritual density of art.

Coexistence in an Era of Crisis

By activating these bodies through creation, I invite viewers to participate in the life cycle of the work. The tension that the work creates, oscillating between the “synthetic” and the “natural,” challenges the meaning of coexistence in an era of crisis, prompting us to examine our fragmented relationship with the environment and to reflect on our position between organic and industrial realities.

This entanglement becomes increasingly urgent as our era subtly erodes, manifested not only in the landscapes we inhabit but also in how we perceive them. The crisis we face is no longer external. It permeates inward, dissolving the boundaries between human and non-human. In this sense, I agree with Timothy Morton’s concept of “dark ecology,” the awareness that there are no clear boundaries between purity and pollution, life and decay.

Creating in this state is not about seeking escape or repair, but about consciously dwelling within our shared pollution, tracing the strange beauty that still exists in death. This collapse transcends the realm of ecology. It tears apart the deep bonds that once tightly connected humanity to the natural world—a rupture I call “Apocalypse of Faith.” This concept envisions a cycle: Faith rises, declines in overexpansion, faces a crisis, and then is reborn.

Synthetic Totem (Variation)
280(L)x120(W)x6(D)cm
Recycled Skateboard Trucks & Mixed Media
NIKE Jaya Center, Shanghai, China, 2024.
ALL Space, Shanghai, China, 2024.

I use this perspective to examine our current disconnect from earthly rhythms. As anthropologist Anna Tsing observed, “We live in a turbulent landscape.” My work is a response to this turbulence, reshaping these materials into ritualistic structures that suggest transformation, pointing towards a future where technological capabilities respond to ecological concern, rather than exacerbate our alienation.

Entangled Life and Shared Responsibility

My creative process typically begins with fieldwork, venturing into regions unfamiliar to me. By living and interacting in new places, I explore the connections between land and ways of life.

I strive to enact ecological justice, a vibrant balance between species, matter, and time. I aim to view creation as a collaboration with, rather than a control over, the environment. In this sense, “eco-warrior” is less a title and more a silent responsibility shared with all life.

I focus on the violence of industrialization: ecosystems silenced by exploitation, their remains scattered in landfills and black markets. However, I am no longer content with mere documentation. I turn to deeper intervention.

By blurring boundaries, species, bodies, and synthetic forms, my work creates a space for us to rethink our partnership with the Earth and its inhabitants. It places humanity in the position of participant rather than supervisor, acknowledging wolves and sheep as our relatives, their lives intertwined with ours in precarious yet profound ways.

I view care as a multifaceted act: touching upon the neglected and abandoned and challenging traditional hierarchies.

The fur, detached from the ecosystem, coexisting with hair and cables in a bittersweet tension, complicates the simplified concept of connection. They demand recognition, not as objects of sympathy, but as unbound partners in a network of reciprocity.

My installations do not offer fixed solutions. They reveal possibilities, exploring how we can coexist with the neglected and cultivate a justice based on reciprocity rather than control. This exploration is tactile and iterative, a rhythm encompassing both loss and longing. Through the traces of what has been taken, ecosystems are disintegrated, life commodified. Yet, they also contain a future-oriented vitality, a silent persistence in possibility. They are like openings, allowing us to pause in the cracks of the Anthropocene and envision a rhythm where our creations harmonize with the Earth’s eternal patterns.

Perceiving the (Nearly) Imperceptible

I believe the era in which humanity can directly perceive nature is rapidly passing. Our linear conceptions of time and the conveniences afforded by technology have made the world smaller, but they also made experience shallower. Travel, for example, has become only as valuable as the mass-produced souvenirs and piles of digital garbage (photos and videos) it generates. People are encouraged to perform and consume their identities, such that culture becomes a decorative display and museum-like showcase, a curated spectacle, filtered through tourism, branding, and digital circulation. In our accumulation of trophies, we have lost the rewards of perception.

Faced with this irreversible reality, I do not create nostalgic illusions of revival, but rather regard creation as an exploration into the nearly imperceptible. I try to reawaken depth of feeling through my work, allowing the land, labor, and spirituality to speak in a contemporary context. I seek a balance between scientific thought and spiritual experience, between rational structure and accidental generation. My creations reflect a process of resonance with the world. To resist forgetting requires an attitude of awareness amidst irreversible change.

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Featured image: A close-up image of Dongbay’s exhibit, Synthetic Totem (2024).

Dongbay (Yübo Xü) is an artist and eco-warrior based between Beijing and Shanghai. Born in the Northeast of China and shaped by a nomadic upbringing, his practice explores humanity’s fading connection to nature amid accelerating industrial and digital transformation. Through installations, films, and writing, he combines organic materials with urban detritus, developing concepts such as primitive futurism and ritual minimalism to examine how ecological wisdom can be reimagined in the Anthropocene. Website. Instagram. Contact.