Dunwu - Epiphanies
is part of an on-going research focused on the historical memory of contemporary China and its daily presentation through medias in a 'monumental' perspective.
The obsession with the last 150 years' historical events has become, in China, a majestic tool to re-elaborate national identity. But 'memory' does not only mean 'collective' identity, it is something more personal intertwined with every individual's psychological knots. Contemporary China's memory, then, cannot be realistically considered as homogeneous. Hence the choice to focus on the perspective of the laobaixing (the Chinese common-man) with flesh and bones and his own transient memories, that turn he himself into an epiphany of time and history.
This series rises from the overlap/clash between 'existential' history and monumental history and the attempt to narrate through images a subjective mnemonic and identity process, which refuses to be left on the border of official histories and creatively explodes through a narrative construct built on illuminations (epiphanies). Epiphanies become data to be archived and preserved and the snapshot (an attempt to catch the moment of illumination in human consciousness) is chosen to express the diachronic narration through the roughness of photographic grain and the motion blurs.
China and its History are finally re-evoked as a ghost, appearing/disappearing around us.
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