The China Project

155 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection HU Yang In January 2004, Hu Yang commenced his vast, encyclopaedic project, ‘Shanghai living’, which documents 500 families from Shanghai in a series of photographs. The project continued for 14 months and aimed, in the artist’s words, to ‘understand the present Shanghai thoroughly, comprehensively and objectively’ by photographing and interviewing families from across the city, including ‘foreigners and Shanghainese, from rich, middle-class to the impoverished’. 1 Hu Yang’s ambition was to create a kind of historical and sociological archive that would enable an understanding of the living conditions and environment of Shanghai families in the twenty-first century. When photographing his subjects, Hu Yang asked all participants the same three questions: ‘What is your current living condition?’, ‘What is your most desired thing to do if without any particular concern on time, money and energy?’ and ‘What is the biggest torture now in your life?’ By focusing the camera on the internal lives and home environments of his subjects, Hu Yang also documented the inexorable and rapid modernisation of Shanghai. Wide-reaching economic reforms instituted in the 1990s aimed to transform the city from a socialist market economy into a cosmopolitan financial and commercial centre. On an everyday basis, this meant that the city itself was in flux. From the mid 1990s to 2004 (when Hu Yang began his project), over 3000 skyscrapers were built in Shanghai, creating one of the most fantastical, recognisable skylines in the world. In the process, entire neighbourhoods were erased. Between 1991 and 2004, the city dismantled nearly 21 million square metres of old housing, and moved 373 400 households. 2 These changes were accompanied by social problems including unemployment and labour and housing shortages. All of these factors created, and are reflected in, the lifestyles of the families in Hu Yang’s photographs — from the obsessive consumerism and the vast gap between rich and poor, to the desire to create an enclosed world in the home that will shut out the external world. Hu Yang’s intention was to work from the perspective of a journalist or documentary photographer, attempting to create an objective view of Shanghai’s people. However, these photographs are not straightforward documentations of ‘reality’, but unavoidably reflect the artist’s own subjective impressions and desires. Hu Yang used a Contax 645N camera and colour negative film, evident in the photographs’ strong and artificial colours. In addition, he used a wide-angle lens, which enabled him to capture the home environments of his subjects and to convey a sense of intimacy and depth. Hu Yang’s ‘Shanghai living’ is both a record of the lives and personalities of the people who inhabit Shanghai and a reflection of the emerging city itself. As critic Zhang Hong writes, ‘Shanghai is rather an “interior” city. Only by plunging deep into the interiority — Shanghai people’s homes — can we truly know this city’s spiritual life’. 3 endnotes 1 Hu Yang, ‘Statement of Shanghai Living’, 2005. <http:// china.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/text.htm> , viewed 5 May 2006. 2 The official website of Shanghai Municipality. <http:// www.shanghai.gov.cn/shanghai/node8059/BasicFacts/ education/userobject22ai8524.html>, viewed 8 May 2006. 3 Zhang Hong, ‘Image utopia’, in Shanghai Living [exhibition catalogue], ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, China, 2005, p.5. ‘Shanghai living’ series (details) 2004–05 Type C photographs, ed. 5/8 / 6 of 100 sheets: 45 x 60cm (each) / Purchased 2006. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund