Amelia Johnson Contemporary is pleased to present China Lucida, an exhibition of photographs by Canadian artist Greg Girard and Chinese artist Wang Wei. China Lucida casts light upon the aspects of contemporary China that have been obscured by the more spectacular and ostentatious features of China’s economic rise. This new exhibition confronts our assumptions on Chinese contemporary society, Chinese contemporary art and on the ways in which China has been depicted using the medium of photography. Girard and Wang’s large format photographs focus upon individuals and places existing at the periphery of China’s economic success. Girard’s haunting night photographs of Shanghai’s condemned neighbourhoods and deserted alleys invoke an overpowering sense of nostalgia and loss for these buildings, which have survived decades of political and social upheaval only to be destroyed by market economics. Wang Wei’s photographs of the ubiquitous hotel attendant reference the government regulated standard rooms of the Chinese hospitality industry. Her unsentimental, finely-detailed portraits of hotel workers express the hopes and frustrations of the young alongside the stoicism and resilience of the old.
Wang Wei lives and works in Beijing. She studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and worked as a graphic and web designer before returning to CAFA to study photography in 2002. Wang Wei worked as a freelance photographer for a variety of publications. Her work has been exhibited at 798 RedT Space (Beijing), Les Rencontres d’Arles (Arles), and the ZKM Museum (Karlsruhe).
Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer based in Shanghai. Between 1987 and 1997 he established himself as a photographer based in Hong Kong. In 1993 he published the book “City of Darkness”, a document of the final years of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, in collaboration with Ian Lambot. His work has been exhibited at the Kwangju Biennale (Kwangju), the Hayward Gallery (London), as well as in galleries in Shanghai, Vancouver and Toronto.
