Wrong Question










During the creation process of "Wrong Question", I developed a path that I walked repeatedly every day: from the city to the suburbs, from my residence to the temple. In the repeated actions, I captured the changes in the surrounding landscape and discovered an interesting phenomenon: with the rapid expansion of cities into the countryside, the original buildings were bulldozed, and the surrounding people filled the new open space with crops.


The fragments of the building intertwine with the crops, creating a man-made natural environment. This inspired me to further think about cities, native residents, and nature.


During the production process, I used a large number of photos to present the phenomenon of native residents being squeezed and expelled by the expanding city through collage, superimposition, and stacking. The visual impressions given by the vegetable patches one after another, the scattered construction debris, and the turned-up ground all have something in common with my layout form of "Wrong Questions." I drew inspiration from the structure of the Chinese-style garden, geology and satellite imagery to create natural transitions from image to image. I also use the water in the environment to connect the photos to create a natural flow. At the same time, a great many overhead shooting angles as well as stacked images are used to create long panoramic pictures to imitate the feeling of satellite images and geological maps.



My work attempts to reveal the relationship between the rapid development of urbanization in China and the disappearance of local residents. In this process, the lives of residents have been disrupted by urbanization, but they still maintain a close and stubborn connection with the land through planting on this destroyed land. In my opinion, this is a forced behavior. When old buildings are torn down, new buildings rise. As a witness of this process, it makes me think: rapid transformation can make the city prosperous and modern, but is this really the right path?