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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation, © Wang Jianwei
On View
Mediatheque
Wang Jianwei 汪建偉
Living Elsewhere 生活在別處
1999
Living Elsewhere uses a direct documentary style to capture economic disparity in contemporary China. Filmed between 1997 and 1999, it depicts the everyday lives of four families who reside in a field of abandoned, half-finished luxury villas near the Chengdu airport. The work opens with a statue of Mao Zedong backlit by pulsating neon signage, but quickly transitions to farmers living in abject poverty within the concrete shells of the villas. They draw water from a well, cook with coal briquettes on improvised stoves, and farm the lands around the structures, whose grandly pitched roofs and gaping window holes make a surreal backdrop. The residents eke out a living in this bleak liminal zone between economic progress and stagnation, counting their daily income in single digits. With minimal aesthetic interventions, Wang intellectualises a paradoxical and ubiquitous, yet often overlooked, aspect of urban poverty.
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