Zhangjiakou (张家口) has always been a strategic military pass that separates the Mongolian Gobi Desert and the North China Plain. Not surprisingly, dynastic regimes in the past always paid special attention to the sections of the Great Wall passing through the region, rebuilding and upgrading them frequently. Then, during the Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War, and the Cold War, new fortresses and bunkers were added alongside with the ancient war
History was made (and buried) here. Without this secret uranium mine in Hunan Province, China would not be able to develope its first atomic and hydrogen bombs in the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, hundreds of workers sacrificed their lives due to industrial accidents and radioactive illness over the decades. Yet, their stories were little known to the outside world. When I finally visited the site after months of delay and procrastination, construction
My encounter with “nature” in a recent visit to the Xiongan New District, which has been slated to become China’s latest hightech zone.
It is often said that the keys to understanding the future (and the past) are all around us. Here are some random shots that I made when I was doing photographic work in Zhangjiakou recently. These street scenes remind me of China a few decades ago. Yet, even in these small places, there are telling signs about China’s past, present, and future.
Mr. 孙柏山 was once a migrant worker because he hoped to earn enough money to fulfill his dream of going to art school. Years later, he came back to this poor village in Hebei province after earning only two yuan (25 cents). Nevertheless, along the way, he managed to acquire a few auction catalogues featuring Song Dynasty (960-1279) paintings. And that was how his painting career began. Drawing inspirations from
In the realm of alternative facts, things are ready to be great again.
In a photo-essay that seeks to bring “future-oriented fictions and urban-centred theories of China and India” together, historian Kavita Philip writes about my photos, along with those by Dipti Desai. “How might we think dialogically about the material geographies of China and India, while not overplaying the familiar comparative analytics of borders and populations, communism and democracy, economic and cultural difference? How might we think in the longue durée about
UofT Magazine features my research and artistic practices. >>> READ MORE >>>
The ruins of this advanced warning radar station make us think of another Cold War ruins seven thousand kilometers away… >>> READ MORE >>>
Today is the last day of my exhibition at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, one of Berlin’s state museums. This five month exhibition has been an innovative and experimential project in that my photographs of China’s post-socialist urban transformation are in dialogue with several traditional-style Chinese landscape paintings from the 1960s. Among other things, the exhibition shows contrasting landscapes, media forms, early/postsocialist modernity, and utopian/dystopian visions. Here are the links