FQM artist Michael Cherney is featured in the recently published seventh issue of MODA Critical Review, an academic journal at Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. The article “The After-flow” written by James Xue studies Cherney’s photographic landscape handscroll Canglang Waters (沧浪之水) in Tracing the Water Classic series (水经迹) through its transcendence from a multilayered literary pilgrimage into a meditation on survival and life.
Cherney made Canglang Waters right before the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic in January, 2020. Completing the handscroll while quarantined, Cherney imbues the artwork with a timely melancholia and a thorough meditation fostered by a societal loss of mobility. In “The After-flow,” James Xue reads Cherney’s handscroll in its timely context, unpacking how the suspension of time during the pandemic gave birth to a mental debate and a revelation on a person’s way of adapting to one’s circumstance in a peaceful manner. In such a revelation, the afterlife of Cherney’s handscroll returns itself to the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan (屈原)’s debate with a fisherman, which returns the painting to the subject of its pilgrimage.
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The MODA Critical Review is dedicated to exploring and presenting artistic research, forms of criticism, and creative work beyond the academic format. Edited by current M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA) students at Columbia University, each annual issue is organized around a keyword that serves as an origin point for a diverse body of contributions. The seventh issue’s theme is “aftertaste,” meant to describe the lingering sensation and impression that “resists erasure.”
James Xue is the research and administrative assistant at the FQM. He holds a B.A. in Art History from UC San Diego (2023) and an M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University (2026). James is the editor-in-chief of the MODA Critical Review and Kathryn Wasserman Davis Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
See the complete issues of MODA Critical Review at https://arthistory.columbia.edu/content/moda-critical-review
