Kiliii Yuyan | The Lenses of Culture – Photoville x Winchester

As part of our Photoville x Winchester Artist Talks we are pleased to bring photographer Kiliii Yuyan to the Griffin Museum Rotary Terrace for an in person artist talk. Part of the Social Documentary Network‘s exhibition Sustainable Solutions to the Climate Crisis. The exhibition is located on the grounds of the Jenks Center.

Join us Saturday night August 5th at 7.30 pm on the Griffin Terrace for a special presentation and conversation about Kiliii and his series Cultural Fire and a broader conversation about documenting culture and traditional knowledge.

This event is generously supported by the Mass Cultural Council, Social Documentary Network and the Winchester Cultural Council.

Cultural Fire
Each summer, headlines around the world shout about the seemingly apocalyptic wildfires raging across the American West. Despite the intense focus on the problem itself, scant attention is paid to solutions- including one particularly pragmatic solution to climate-change exacerbated wildfire. It’s at first non-intuitive– fire-lighting rather than fire-fighting– but it has proven to be an exceptional weapon against a seemingly impossible opponent on a landscape-level scale.

It’s known as cultural fire. The Yurok, Karuk and Hupa, with community members like Margo Robbins and Elizabeth Azzuz of the Indigenous Peoples’ Burn Network are training others in this ancient technique of ecological restoration. To perform a cultural burn is to safely light low-intensity fires in wet seasons that remove the small fuels on the forest floor. Not only does it effectively prevent wildfires from spreading, but it also performs a 13,000 year old function- the restoration of health of the forests of Northern California, the most diverse coniferous forests on earth.

About Kiliii Yuyan

Photographer Kiliii Yuyan tells the stories of lives bound to the land and sea. Raised in America, he is informed by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé and Chinese. Kiliii searches for insight into the human relationship to the natural world from different cultural perspectives. On assignment, he has survived a stalking polar bear, escaped pounding waves diving with sea otters, and found kinship at the edges of the world. Kiliii makes photographic stories for the pages of National Geographic Magazine, TIME, and other major publications.