SHENGJING PANORAMA
Project creation, design and production by Sara Velas in collaboration with Ruby Carlson, Guan Rong, Andy Cao and Rastra Contreras. Painting, Historical Research & Composition Design: Li Wu, Yan Yang, and Zhou Fuxian, 3D Terrain: Sara Velas, Anna Tanner, Rosco Posada, Sara Bautista, Ava Salzman. Light Design: Chu Hsuan-Chang. Sound Composition: Moritz Fehr.
As the June sun sets on 24th Street in Los Angeles, we see a neon marquee of a 1910 cinema theatre that reads “Panorama and Gardens On View” with an orange globe beaming above. There are 19th Century houses across the street, some in the Queen Anne style, next to concrete apartment complexes and neighborhood children riding their bicycles as cars drive by cautiously. We step into a canary yellow lobby with exhibits of ephemera and relics and follow a dim, wood-paneled hallway until we come to an even darker passage, our footsteps slowing to a crawl while our eyes adjust to a new visual world. We reach a circular staircase and climb upwards to a strange light where we emerge on top of a crumbling, stone wall overlooking treetops, thatched houses, guard towers, horse stables, street vendors and people as far as the eye can see of another time and another, faraway place.
This is the view of Shengjing Panorama, a 360-degree painting of Shenyang, China during the years 1910-1930, and the first panoramic collaboration between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. Located at The Velaslavasay Panorama (VP) in the Historic District of West Adams in Los Angeles, California, Shengjing Panorama is a collaborative project initiated and conceived by Sara Velas and the VP and painted by Li Wu, Yan Yang, and Zhou Fuxian, panorama artists and professors of the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts.
Utilizing single-point perspective, the painting is divided into the four cardinal directions to illustrate the local customs and culture of Shenyang during the time period of 1910-1930, including: religious ceremonial practices, marketplace and trading methods, foreign-designed and native historic architecture, transportation hubs, rituals of public life, and the diverse scope of the city. The painting is a close approximation of the city’s geography and features four gourd-shaped Buddhist pagodas dating back to 1643, in the east, west, north and south (which remain in the city today) to help viewers pinpoint their direction.
Excerpt adapted from essay by Ruby Carlson & Sara Velas for International Panorama Council Journal, Volume 2, 2018.
Image credits: Forest Casey (exterior view of Velaslavasay) The Wax Paper (top image - installation view) Li Wu (preparatory drawings) Ruby Carlson (in-progress images)