I curate the exhibition of photographer Dustin Shum for Asolo Art Film Festival in collaboration with Urbanautica web site staff. The show is part of the Art Shift Programme curated with chinese artist Chen Mei Yuan. The images are taken from the series It Isnae Disney.
«For many in China, going to parks has always been a basic, primary way of spending leisure time. During recent years, with the growing sophistication and consumerism of the modern Chinese, public parks have evolved in a strange, limpid, direction towards what I would describe as “pseudo-theme parks”, where “fairground” style mechanical games or attractions are built. Parks are also a means to demonstrate the wealth and status of the municipal government. Bequeathing a park may mean the town or city is “well-established” and that it possesses a certain “cultural standing”; or it may simply be a physical manifestation of authority. The collection of images on display have been taken in parks of various sizes throughout China, in which the unintentional ambiguity of a number of attractions allows visitors to interact in personalized, un-prepackaged ways, ways which insulate them from a world which is not as perfect as the entertainment space they engage with, and ways which probably run contrari to their government’s intentions of proper citizen entertainment.»
See also Urbanautica, Asolofilmfestival
