Shangri-La

- Film & Video (Film & Video)

40 min

Patty Chang

location: New York, New York
year born: 1972
gender: female
nationality: American
home town: San Francisco, California

The video “Shangri-La” refers to the mythical city of James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon” written in 1933 and is exemplified in a film by Frank Capra which speaks of eternal youth in a city of happiness. In 1997, a small town in an agricultural region of central China near the Tibetan border was proclaimed as the place that inspired Shangri-la. Thereafter, a dozen other cities in the same area have claimed to be paradise on earth, prompting a marketing battle without mercy, raging on until the government’s intervention. The mirror used to build the model of the mountain is highly symbolic and often appears in the work of the artist. In literature and art, it represents the transition between reality and the dream world composed of projections and desires. Chang’s work focuses on the reality and fiction inherent in an existing space in both its concrete embodiment and its myth. She explores the idea of a real journey to an imaginary place. This work exposes contradictions: the search for a city’s roots and traditions leads to a falsification of its history, and cultural conflicts inside of touristic and financial goals.


When she arrived in New York in the mid 1990s, Patty Chang became involved in the performance scene. Staging her own body in intensely difficult situations enables her to denounce problems she observes in contemporary society such as various excessive behaviors like eating disorders, as well as the sex trade, gender and cultural stereotypes, identity issues. Soon, she also used video and photography (like the Contortion series 2000-2002) to document her actions and extend her practice. By appropriating cinematic conventions, popular culture, pornography, literature and translation, Chang ceaselessly explores and subverts historical and current relations between East and West. Patty Chang was born in San Leandro, California, in 1972. She lives and works in New York.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Body Parts, » Color Photography, » Consumerism, » Contemporary Grotesque, » American  
» see more

Armless
© » KADIST

Chloe Piene

2005

The figure in Armless tapers away...

Ghost games
© » KADIST

Anri Sala

2002

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach...

Floor, Legs
© » KADIST

Elad Lassry

2013

In establishing a deliberate distance between viewer and subject, Lassry raises questions about representation itself and how all portraits are, in effect, fully constructed objects that only gain meaning once we ascribe them with our own personal associations and emotions...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Armless
© » KADIST

Chloe Piene

2005

The figure in Armless tapers away...

Sirens
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1977

Taking its title from the eponymous mythological creature—famously featured as sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey...

Peg and Jon
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Dutch Emerging: Ruben Janssen X GRA Fashion Bachelor 2023
© » DIANE PERNET

Dutch Emerging: Ruben Janssen X GRA Fashion Bachelor 2023 – A Shaded View on Fashion From the back to the middle and around again — Ria’s wedding dress, Alan’s patterns and John’s model: ‘My project is an investigation into evolution, explored through prisms of biology, computation and a poetic personal narrative, shifting between timescales on an evolutionary timeline...

Untitled (Celestial Motors)
© » KADIST

Maria Taniguchi

2012

Untitled (Celestial Motors) is a visual meditation on an icon of modern urban Philippine life—the jeepney...

nor Reclaims the Transgender Experience from Mainstream Media (via Frieze)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

nor Reclaims the Transgender Experience from Mainstream Media (via Frieze) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles October 2, 2018 The walls of nor’s exhibition, ‘In Love’, are painted millennial pink...

Michigan Central Station
© » KADIST

Stan Douglas

1997

Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...

Related artist(s) to: Patty Chang » Aki Sasamoto, » Alexis Destoop, » Asia Society, » Ava Ansari, » Burçak Bingöl, » Cao Fei, » Ceren Erdem, » Charwei Tsai, » Craig Yee, » Dinos Chapman  
» see more

Hermit Crab Project
© » KADIST

Charwei Tsai

2008

Charwai Tsai’s photograph documents her Hermit Crab Project installation upon the construction site of gallery Sora in Tokyo...

Poetry Light Stool
© » KADIST

Aki Sasamoto

2012

Poetry Light Stool evokes the spirit of Fluxus, the intermedia movement that encouraged artmaking to be simple, fun, and address everyday life...

Diversionist
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2004

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

A Feminist Memory Project in Nepal
© » APERTURE

An expansive archive illustrates the role of women in shaping over a century of the country's political and public life....

Araf
© » KADIST

Didem Pekün

2018

The black-and-white projection, Araf by Didem Pekün, begins, as a lithe man stands high up in the middle of the grand, rebuilt 16th-century Ottoman bridge in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Apostolos Georgiou

2016

Untitled (2016) is characteristic of the artist’s practice...