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

Armless
© » KADIST

Chloe Piene

2005

The figure in Armless tapers away...

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...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

Sign series, #1, #2, #3
© » KADIST

Bjorn Copeland

2009

Sign #1 , Sign #2 , Sign #3 were included in “Found Object Assembly”, Copeland’s 2009 solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco...

I can’t believe we are still protesting
© » KADIST

Wong Wai Yin

2021

Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...

Map (from Uncertain Pilgrimage), 2006-2009
© » KADIST

Gareth Moore

2006

Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...

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...

Portrait: Cover and Clean
© » KADIST

Qiu Anxiong

2011

A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...

Flower Tree
© » KADIST

Choi Jeong-Hwa

2008

The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle...

Stanley "Tom" Durrell, Tinsmith
© » KADIST

Sharon Lockhart

2008

Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...

Untitled (Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak)
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2008

The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...

Herculine's Profecy
© » KADIST

Juliana Huxtable

2017

Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...

20 Surrogates
© » KADIST

Allan McCollum

1982

In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...

Nachbau
© » KADIST

Simon Starling

2007

Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...

Iris Tingitana Oxalis
© » KADIST

Yto Barrada

2007

This photograph is part of the series titled “Iris Tingitana project” (2007) focusing on the disappearance of the iris...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Trisha Donnelly

2007

Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...

Tribute to Inside Looking Out - For the male artists along my way
© » KADIST

Wong Wai Yin

2008

In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...

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...

Untitled (Schindler House, #01)
© » KADIST

Luisa Lambri

2007

Rudolph Schindler’s designs, part of a practice he called “Space Architecture,” marry interior with exterior and space with light...