Archaeology of the Present (Dongguan) No. 4
2016 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
120 x 50 x 100 cm
Li Jinghu
Benefiting from its geographic proximity to Hong Kong, since the 1980s Dongguan has become the factory of the world, with toys, plastic products and clothing as the major industries in the town. During its heyday, the region produced 50% of the world’s manufactured toys, but since 2008, the toy industry has declined as the factories moved to South East Asia. Archaeology of the Present (Dongguan) No. 4 by Li Jinghu presents ten bronze figures. The figures are the discarded bronze moulds for plastic toys which Li collected from the scrap yards of the factories. Li places the found objects on a tubular base which references the facade of skyscrapers as well as a museological display. With the figures’ rusting skin, missing heads and limbs, the moulds appear like bronze sculptures of an ancient age. However, upon closer inspection, details of popular cartoons ranging from Ultraman to Doraemon become visible.“When I was a kid, I always went to the scrap stations to find discarded toys and reassemble them at home. They became my favourite toys. When I saw the rusted toy moulds lying in the scrap yard, it looked like an archaeological site. I feel those days are thousands of years ago. Time and space are dislocated” said Li. In a poetic yet ironic way, Li questions the flux of materials transforming the region with the immense volumes of commodities manufactured at speed to meet global distribution, a result of intense industrialisation and globalisation in China.
Li Jinghu was born in 1972 in Dongguan, Guangdong, where he currently lives and works. Giving up the opportunity to work in Shenzhen, Li moved back to his hometown Dongguan in 2002. Over the past 19 years, Li has witnessed and captured the changes of Dongguan from a small agricultural town to a manufacturing hub in the Pearl River Delta. Li works primarily with sculpture and installation, through which presents an intertwining and ongoing personal ‘historiography’ of a landscape in flux – his poetically charged works frequently utilises humble materials gathered from his everyday locales. His practice seeks to both capture and transcend the line between collectivity and personal forms of expression. His work addresses issues about migrant workers, industrialisation, the world’s factories, and capitalism on the backdrop of modernisation, urbanisation, and globalisation in Dongguan and China.
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