Opening: Living the City

We are excited to announce the exhibition opening and reception for the exhibition Living the City: contemporary everyday in China on 20 February 202 at BCU’s Parkside Gallery in central Birmingham.

The photographic exploration is part of RAAD researcher Dr Federica Mirra’s Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship research project.  Hosted by CCVA, our research cluster for Chinese Visual Art, Federica is researching The City as Art: Living Aesthetics in Twenty-First-Century China.

The selected photographs in Living the City portray Chinese cities both as spectacular and ordinary entities. Specifically, they highlight the unprecedented socio-economic changes since 1978, which are still being negotiated in China’s urban space and society. The pictures include still-shots of morning routines and night activities in the city, such as dancing, playing chess, writing calligraphy, as well as LED animated lightshows on kilometric skylines. Whereas the urban daily life attests to everyday, spontaneous, bodily practices, the night-life rhythms are often fast-paced, hi-fi and spectacular. This photographic archive explores the diverse, asynchronous and multi-sensorial experiences that are currently evoked in and by Chinese cities. Finally, it aims to give a more nuanced understanding of the People’s Republic of China as a complex, everchanging and societal entity rather than a monolithic, or even threatening, nation.

The exhibition includes photos of morning routines and night activities in several Chinese cities, such as Changsha, Guiyang, Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing. The photographic exploration will be displayed outdoors to better reflect the aim of the project, namely to examine what is often excluded from traditional aesthetics – the everyday – and enhance public engagement. The opening reception will include welcome speeches by Dr Federica Mirra  as well as BCU Interim Pro VC Prof Maxine Lintern and Director of CCVA Prof Jiang Jiehong.

Funding was kindly provided by the Leverhulme Trust.