My Autobiograpy

I was born and brought in Shanghai, the metropolis in China. As the inequality and inequity between urban and rural got even worse in China since the “opening and reforming policy” was implemented during the 90’s. When the number of laid-off and unemployed workers increased, the social security system was not yet in place, leading to a yearly rise in urban poverty. Besides that, the lack of resources and imbalanced distribution not only formed a terribly heavy burden of living on urban residents, but also on migrants who work in Shanghai. The burden is even worse for them. Considering of all this, when I was very young, I accepted the so call elite education and was taught mostly the cruel competition in the outside world. I call this, which influenced my work a lot, the “urbanism culture”. When great attention has been taken by other artists on the poverty of rural province or some Africa countries, my works are mostly focus on urban poverty, which is not only on material consumption but also on spirit.

I identify myself as the urbanite individual and my works are focus on the representation of urban life and visible or even invisible pressures on urbanites’ shoulders. In my art, I try to show the fierce competition in the urban life, the employment options, the fast paces of life and most important, the distant relationship between people. I named all these as urban diseases which conforms the main feature of the urbanism culture and that gave me the inspiration of creation.

My desired audiences are mostly the young urbanites, especially the young people who have already graduated from universities. As a member of them, I have a closer feeling similar to them. I, myself, was tired of the urban life and chose to “escape” from Shanghai to Hangzhou, another not that busy city, to pursue my undergraduate study. When I realized that I finally got rid of the busy traffic, the noise all around me and the serious competition sensation that accompanied with me when I was very young, I felt that I was kind of unable to survive very well outside this system. When I was in Hangzhou, I felt very uncomfortable with the uncompleted urbanism, such as the lack of subways and various kinds of stores and most important, the lack of “urban personality”. Then, I began missing the life in Shanghai.

When I created my work to present the feeling about urban life, I am interested in present the contradictive that urbanites respond to the city life. On one hand, people want to get rid of the competitive situation of life and the distant relationships. However, on the other hand, urbanites seem unable to survive outside this urban system and urban life became the only place that they can be satisfied.It is hard for me to place my situation in this culture. Even I want to be out of it, I still found myself was rooted in it very early in my life. In my work, I try to conflict the dark side of urban life and the problem of thought and action that brought by urbanism. However, on the other side, as a part of them, I myself act and think base on the same way. As being the production of elite education, I was already categorized in the particular state in urban system and I know deeply what I will face in my future urban life. Depends on this back ground, the concept that I want to present in my work are mostly about the representation of urbanite’s stress and the consequence that brought by the urban system.