Nomads get wider canvas

Painter Liu Xiaodong stands in front of one of his latest works about Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, showing nomads riding on horseback with the vast city stadium in the background. Another painting from the series (below). [Photo By Zhang Wei/China Daily]

Oil painter Liu Xiaodong's latest works focus on people migrating to Ordos. Deng Zhangyu reports.

He is regarded as one of the most important oil painters in China.

But Liu Xiaodong has long focused on depicting people at the very bottom of societymigrant workers in cities, migrants from the Three Gorges Dam area and sex workers in Thailand among others.

These constant protagonists on Liu's canvases win him fame and help him set bidding records in auction houses.

Liu's latest works concentrate on nomadic people migrating to Ordos in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region - a fancy city labeled a ghost town by the media for its small population.

His show called Diary of An Empty City presented by the Faurschou Foundation in Beijing comprises 36 paintings, which Liu produced during his two-month stay in Ordos this summer.

Three large oil paintings show urban Mongolians sitting on horseback with the the city's landmarks like the stadium, the museum and the opera house in the background.

"I want to show the conflict between an agricultural society and industrial cities, as well as the contrast between urbanization and the lost nomadic culture.