‘Urban Fiction image 0’ – 241.8 x 170 cm – 2004
Detail of ‘Urban Fiction image 0’ – 241.8 x 170 cm – 2004
‘Urban Fiction image 5’ – 221.7 x 170 cm – 2005
Detail of ‘Urban Fiction image 5’ – 221.7 x 170 cm – 2005
Words by Sadie Christie ● Images from Xing Danwen’s website
Employing art forms to reflect and create a dialogue on the effects of urbanisation has already been widely used by artists in China, but few have made it as personal as Xing Danwen, who quite literally imposes herself as an impacted subject in her own work. In many ways though, she wouldn’t be able to separate herself from her art if she tried. Born in Xi’an in 1967 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, her life has run parallel to massive social and cultural changes in China. After moving to Beijing to do her BFA in painting, she was drawn to using photography as an art form with which to play, ask questions and reflect on identity, society and her generation’s experience at the center of China’s urban development.
On the immaculate, empty streets, she imagines storylines, from the mundane to the dramatic, of the people that might occupy the spaces – the murderous mistress, the contemplative heiress, the suicidal businesswoman.
In her ongoing series Urban Fiction (2002), she begins by photographing macquettes – architectural development models of current and future real estate projects in Beijing. The models themselves look as though they could exist anywhere in the world, which seems to be the point. As architectural model before construction, they are a fiction waiting to become reality, and therefore the perfect space for Danwen to play with the truth and illusion in between. For her the urban landscape is one that breeds isolation and loneliness. On the immaculate, empty streets, she imagines storylines, from the mundane to the dramatic, of the people that might occupy the spaces – the murderous mistress, the contemplative heiress, the suicidal businesswoman. Through acting and an impressive array of costume, she digitizes the film and inserts herself as the various characters she imagines in the tableaux of urbanity. It’s an exercise in voyeurism: viewers must search out and look closely at the characters that get lost in the grandiosity of a landscape where dreams and desires are sold to us in a cold, sterile framework of steel and concrete.
Danwen continues to focus on themes of urban development and globalisation through photography, mixed media, video and multi-media installations.
●●
Xing Danwen works and lives in Beijing. She was born in Xi’an where she studied painting before moving to Beijing to do her BFA at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. It was there she discovered her love of photography and changed her focus. She was awarded grants from the Asian Arts Council to do her MFA at School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been recognized and exhibited domestically and internationally. She also contributes to workshops and conferences.
