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Lot Essay
The haunting figures that hang from the ceiling in Zhang Dali's Chinese Offspring offer a poignant and moving reminder of the army of silent and anonymous workers that have fuelled the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy in the last decade. Theses anonymous figures caught in suspended animation evokes the millions of Chinese who have uprooted themselves from their homes and migrated to the rapidly growing cities where they toil nameless and unknown to create the gleaming new cities that have become the face of modern China. Chinese Offspring is one of the artist's best known works and these fifteen figures are one of the largest groupings of these bodies in existence, providing an evocative examination of the human and social effects of the fraught and difficult process of modernization.
Between 2003 and 2005 Zhang created 100 resin and fiberglass figures, modeled on the bodies of real migrant workers, to represent the millions of labourers who are rebuilding his country from the ground up. Each figure; some male, some female, is naked and identified only by an identification number together with the title of the work and artist's signature that is tattooed onto the torso. The grouping hangs from the ceiling, detached from their environment and caught in an intermediate state, belonging to neither heaven nor earth. Each life-sized figure is captured in a different pose, some crouching, some with their arms outstretched, as if caught in the middle of one of the feverish tasks that characterise their lives. Although their bodies capture the frenetic pace of life in the new Chinese economy, their faces remain impassive with their eyes closed and expressionless features. This recalls one the Zhang's other iconic works, 100 Chinese, whose resin casts of migrant workers heads also suggest the erasure of identity in the context of massive growth and displacement.
Zhang Dali spent most of the 1990s living and working in Italy where he first encountered graffiti art. On his return to the Chinese capital he began to tag some of the walls in the city with a graffiti head. This marque, part self-portrait and part political comment, began to pop up all over the city and eventually began to transcend its static street setting and become part of the cacophony of voices that characterised a new generation of Chinese urbanites. Working across a variety of different media, Zhang has become one of the most constant voices chronicling the changes in China. The street art, photographs and installations that have become part of his Demolition and Dialogue series present a moving testament to the massive changes that are taking place across Chinese society as it undergoes a period of rapid change. The dramatic faceless forms that dangle from the ceiling provide a jolting reminder of the human cost of modernization, their anonymous figures, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates. One of Zhang's iconic works, these fifteen figures have become a haunting and powerful comment on the rapidly changing world order, and the fate of the people who help fuel that change.
Between 2003 and 2005 Zhang created 100 resin and fiberglass figures, modeled on the bodies of real migrant workers, to represent the millions of labourers who are rebuilding his country from the ground up. Each figure; some male, some female, is naked and identified only by an identification number together with the title of the work and artist's signature that is tattooed onto the torso. The grouping hangs from the ceiling, detached from their environment and caught in an intermediate state, belonging to neither heaven nor earth. Each life-sized figure is captured in a different pose, some crouching, some with their arms outstretched, as if caught in the middle of one of the feverish tasks that characterise their lives. Although their bodies capture the frenetic pace of life in the new Chinese economy, their faces remain impassive with their eyes closed and expressionless features. This recalls one the Zhang's other iconic works, 100 Chinese, whose resin casts of migrant workers heads also suggest the erasure of identity in the context of massive growth and displacement.
Zhang Dali spent most of the 1990s living and working in Italy where he first encountered graffiti art. On his return to the Chinese capital he began to tag some of the walls in the city with a graffiti head. This marque, part self-portrait and part political comment, began to pop up all over the city and eventually began to transcend its static street setting and become part of the cacophony of voices that characterised a new generation of Chinese urbanites. Working across a variety of different media, Zhang has become one of the most constant voices chronicling the changes in China. The street art, photographs and installations that have become part of his Demolition and Dialogue series present a moving testament to the massive changes that are taking place across Chinese society as it undergoes a period of rapid change. The dramatic faceless forms that dangle from the ceiling provide a jolting reminder of the human cost of modernization, their anonymous figures, indicating the uncertainty of their life and their powerlessness in changing their own fates. One of Zhang's iconic works, these fifteen figures have become a haunting and powerful comment on the rapidly changing world order, and the fate of the people who help fuel that change.