As China continues to grow into the world’s premier economic
power, it has aggressively pursued modernity with little regard for the
millennia-old communities and traditions that widespread urban
development effectively displaces. The contemporary Chinese artists
whose work is collected in China Urban have witnessed the
process of urbanization first-hand, and here they approach the tension
between the nation’s rich cultural history and the new Chinese
metropolis with a mixture of excitement and terror.
The exhibition itself has been organized in a way that replicates
the crowded, sensory-overloaded atmosphere of urban bustle. Walls have
been erected, creating a denser space for the viewer to navigate, and
audio from several video works mingles, as overlapping voices and city
sounds project a sense of erupting activity. Even the exhibition’s
entrance telegraphs urban grit, as a pair of walls are “tagged” with
Chinese characters courtesy of the King of Kowloon, whose work sits
between elegant calligraphy and hastily painted graffiti.
The works themselves, however, often portray China’s burgeoning
urbanity as desolate and alienating. Xie Xiaoze and Chen Zhong’s
Last Days, a series of photographed installations of the
4,000-year-old community of Kai Xiau, which was demolished to make way
for the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, seems to document
post-apocalypse rather than a revitalized civilization. In the photos,
partially destroyed walls are plastered with local newspapers, many
containing propaganda about the dam project. Among the monochrome of
rubble and dust-heavy air, these papered ruins burst with unexpected
color—like a new coat of paint trying to mask the wreckage
beneath.
Chen Quilin’s photographs function similarly, as groups of Chinese
workers pose in drab construction sites, cradling ornate vases of
artificial peonies. Initially, the magenta flowers appear to signify
growth and beauty—China’s entry into a fertile new era. However,
closer scrutiny reveals that these symbols of vitality are plastic, an
imposter version of progress. Scanning the defeated countenances of the
laborers who hoist them, it’s easy to see how the flowers are not
figures of hope for them but, rather, a threat that accelerating
modernity could leave China’s ancestry in the dust.