No.104 Block 10, Tangxia Community, Hua Xia Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

  • Bai Xiaoci II
    Title : Bai Xiaoci II
  • Bai Xiaoci
    Title : Bai Xiaoci
  • IMG 4534
    Title : IMG 4534
  • IMG 4535
    Title : IMG 4535
  • IMG 4628
    Title : IMG 4628
  • IMG 4686
    Title : IMG 4686
  • IMG 4752
    Title : IMG 4752
  • IMG 4771
    Title : IMG 4771
  • IMG 4801
    Title : IMG 4801
  • IMG 4881
    Title : IMG 4881
  • IMG 4961
    Title : IMG 4961
  • IMG 4996
    Title : IMG 4996
  • IMG 5014
    Title : IMG 5014
  • IMG 5046
    Title : IMG 5046
  • Jiang zhi  things would turn nails once they happened
    Title : Jiang zhi things would turn nails once they happened
  • grosse Datei And Your Bird can sing copy
    Title : grosse Datei And Your Bird can sing copy


Press Release

Permanent Migrants is the first exhibition to be held at Inheritance - Shenzhen, a project space in urban Shenzhen.

Retrospective in nature, the exhibition presents artworks that are specific to the city of Shenzhen. It is an attempt at proposing just one of many alternative art histories of the very young city. The artists - many current or former residents - have spent considerable time engaging with the anomalous specificities of Shenzhen.

The title of the exhibition, Permanent Migrants refers to the entirely migrant population of Shenzhen including its artists. Moreover, it brings into question the increasingly universal nature of contemporary visual culture by questioning traditionally geographically specific art histories.

In his photographic project, Bai Xiaoci documents on an epic scale the lives of the migrant habitants of Shenzhen. Jiang Zhi and Yang Yong comment on the consequences of rapid development in their images. Antithetic to such themes, Chu Yun’s intimate work escapes the visual dominance of urbanization and focuses on the daily lives of his Shenzhen co-habitants.

Liu Chuang’s unsettling work deals with the identity of an individual anonymous Shenzhener while both MAP OFFICE’s and Christian Jankowski’s works involve the documentation of and the active participation of factory workers. Daniel Knorr’s contribution to Permanent Migrants reverses the dynamic nature of the city by installing a LED light that tells the gallery of his distant location and in his artists book, by collecting objects found the Shenzhen streets and burying them between the pages. Guy Delisle’s work predates these as an account of nascent Shenzhen in his graphic novel, Shenzhen from his time as a manager in an outsourced animation company in the 1990’s.

Permanent Migrants is an exhibition that proudly recognizes the youthful art history of Shenzhen by temporarily pausing its perpetual dynamism.

Curator: Claire Louise Staunton

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