Shangri-La
- Film & Video (Film & Video)
40 min
Patty Chang
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 sharing similar palette
© » 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...
© » KADIST
Maria Taniguchi
2012Untitled (Celestial Motors) is a visual meditation on an icon of modern urban Philippine life—the jeepney...
© » KADIST
Bruno Serralongue
2008The half-length portrait of Joe Shirley presents a man with a great presence, wearing several items that point to ancestral Native American culture...
© » KADIST
Mohamed Bourouissa
2017In his photographic series Périphérique (2005–2008), Mohamed Bourouissa used the composition of classical paintings to stage the portrait of friends and young people in the banlieue s (suburbs)...
© » KADIST
Gabriel Orozco
1992Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...
© » DAZED DIGITAL
Visit a new exhibition shedding light on man of mystery, Martin Margiela | Dazed â¬…ï¸ Left Arrow *ï¸âƒ£ Asterisk â Star Option Sliders âœ‰ï¸ Mail Exit Fashion Round-up …plus all the other fashion news you missed this week, from a new Balenciaga video game to Robyn Lynch’s London exhibition, and Entire Studios’ Selfridges pop-up 15 December 2023 Text Dominic Cadogan Margiela: In the Void 12 Martin Margiela is as much of an enigma today as he was while at the helm of the brand – which he stepped away from in 2009...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
In pictures: focus on Caribbean artists Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023 feature In pictures: focus on Caribbean artists María Elena Ortiz, curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, picks her favourite works at Art Basel in Miami Beach Alexander Morrison 9 December 2023 Share April Bey, COLONIAL SWAG: Not Conceited, CONVINCED! (2023) © Liliana Mora María Elena Ortiz is a trailblazing curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (the Modern), but she also has close ties to South Florida...
© » KADIST
Mikhael Subotzky
2006At the halfway point along South Africa’s Highway N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg, sits the small town of Beaufort West...
© » KADIST
Newell Harry
2015(Untitled) Nimoa and Me: Kiriwina Notations by Newell Harry brings together a litany of contemporary politics—mobilization around enduring racism, the legacies of Indigenous and independence struggle, and the prospects of global solidarity against neocolonialism and social injustice...
© » KADIST
Stéphane Calais
2007L’herbier (petit Trianon) consists of four “realistic” drawings of plants, screenprinted on transparent PVC...
© » KADIST
Eleanor Antin
1973Comprised of fifty-one photographic postcards, Antin’s 100 Boots is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City...