Curator: Tobias Berger
The Pearl River Delta, located in the south of China is a sprawling construct of different administrative zones. Composed out of the province Guangdong with its capital Guangzhou (Canton) and the ‘Special Administration Regions’ Hong Kong and Macao and the ‘Special Economic Zone’ Shenzhen, it is the biggest production-plant in the world. The cities ranging from ‘free’ but orderly Hong Kong to the Beijing controlled capitalistic/communist Guangzhou are developing in different paces and directions – but are slowly growing closer together to form a mega-city. They are like huge icebergs crashing together, chipping off parts, pushing away others, but still slowly uniting as mega-structures. This is one of the most exciting and rapidly economically and architecturally developing regions in the world – and contemporary art is developing at an equal rate as highly innovative and great artists and organisations are capturing world-wide attention.
In the Pearl River Delta (like many Asian regions) exhibition praxis is largely self-organised and independent from government. Founded out of the urge that there are no adequate governmental exhibition spaces, these groups form an important network for artistic production and exhibition.
The exhibition presents many of the artistic facets that can be found in the Pearl River Delta. As the power and artistic strength of the region cannot be represented by an individual artist or curatorial perspective or by a specific group this exhibition presents its manifold forces. It is not a group-exhibition is the common sense but more an exhibition-cluster with different parts contributed by different organisations. The participating artists that are operating in that organisational network comprised of: the 10 year old Para/Site Art Space from Hong Kong or Vitamin Creative Space from Guangzhou, the media collective Videotage from Hong Kong or Alternative Archive, a film organisation founded by the artists Cao Fei and Ou Ning in Guangzhou. It also presents artists like Jiang Zhi from Shenzhen or the artists/architects Gutierrez + Portifaix who are all part of this vibrating network.
