Bruno Lessard
Chengzhongcun 城中村
May 22 to June 16, 2019
A CONTACT Photography Festival 2019 exhibition.
Main Gallery + Process Gallery
Curated by Henry Heng Lu
Exhibition Description:
Toronto-based artist Bruno Lessard’s Chengzhongcun offers a glimpse into China’s urban villages, also known as “villages in the city” (chengzhongcun 城中村), after dark, and a reconciliation of quotidian moments against a backdrop of accelerated urban transformations. Taking the notion of documenting the public sphere as a point of departure, Lessard’s images inquire into Chinese urban environments as sites of inhabitation and concurrent cultural and political values.
The implementation of China’s Open-Door Policy in the late 1970s and the early 1980s witnessed an unprecedented influx of more than 200 million Chinese rural workers moving to large cities in search of jobs and better lives. In rapidly developing cities, these workers live in so-called “urban villages,” which are overcrowded low-rent settlements encircled by urban expansion.
The structuring of Chengzhongcun is informed by temporary makeshift spaces built by migrant workers, the juxtaposition of the old and the new denoting urban China’s ongoing transformations, and the visual archiving of older parts of town. The exhibition connects both the urban renewal process of Chinese mega-cities, such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chongqing,Beijing, and Guangzhou, and the urban settlement of migrant workers from rural areas who have played a crucial role in China’s recent economic growth.
