THE CITY-SHENZHEN

Yue Zhao

“The collage work the City— Shenzhen is about my ordinary objects and the features of the architecture in the Shenzhen city. The combination of the randomness in the photographs is to show the sense of belonging in this twisted, profit-oriented city. The objects have all been collaged straight-forwardly in front of the city scenes of the residential buildings and the office towers in the living community. Through the process of photographing the city scenes, I found out that Shenzhen is like a base built by aliens. Not only because it is full of buildings that are incredibly designed and difficult to build but also its rapid, restless lifestyle.

The whole meaning of this project is an irony of showing how cruel the city is while showing how I got belonged in the city. Every object I presented in my photos is the object that I grew up with. The building patterns in each collage consist of the apartment that people live in, the home they worked so hard to get, and the office building in a well-known business district nearby. This contrast shows not only the living environment of people in Shenzhen but also the actual achievements people had in this city.”

-Yue Zhao

Yue Zhao

Yue Zhao is currently in fourth year of Visual Art at Emily Carr University. Zhao came from China and now living in Vancouver. Her art practice is based on abstract art. In her painting works, she adores the expression of abstract art that can convey the artist’s feelings and emotions in an indirect way, and bring more visual attraction to the artwork itself. She is also drawn to photography because, in this consumer world, she believed we are surrounded by a lot of advertisements that are wildly using photography as a medium to spread their ideology. Therefore, Zhao also uses photography to work against consumer desire by playing irony on materialism.

Profile image of Yue Zhao