Dream of Migrants, 170x400cm, Photograph, Wang Qingsong, 2005

In November 2006, I worked out an installation which turns into my work called “Dream of Migrants”. This term “Migrants” is very derogatory in China. It means aimlessly drifting population from one place to another, mostly from countryside to big cities to look for jobs. This group of people are called unauthorized flow of population. It hints at social instability. They are of special identity and marked with demean features as dirty, unstable and dangerous. In Beijing, there are nearly 3 million such people. They all hold a dream and look for opportunities when they flow from their hometown to big cities. They bring stimulus for urban development but also bring forth a lot of unstable factors, such as their children have no nice schooling and no stable housing. They used to be driven here and there due to lack of money and reputation. Many people take them as vibrant force but most people regard them as social virus. This derogatorty terms sometimes is mixed up with “Tramp, loafters, gansters, rascals,,,”

I am empathetic to this population. I think they hold onto their dear dreams and like to be recognized in the city and fulfill their values. But as a matter of fact, their dream is hard to realize with initial dream to be in conflict with their result. In 1993, I came to Beijing also from Jinzhou, Hubei Province. Jinzhou is a very small city. I also held deep dream and was surprised at the huge city of 100 times more of population than my hometown and the dramatic social changes in the urban cities. But I sustain because I know so many people like me flow into this city for the same ideal.

In this work, I like to express the pursuit for dream and opportunities in bigger city. InBeijing Movie Studio I built up a three-storey building. At first glance, this building is like a Chinese-style architecture. But upon closer look, one finds it combines the former Soviet Union architecture as well as European architecture in addition to the Chinese traditional civil house making. We can see the past brilliance and the potential danger of this combined architecture. I also create a dirty moist land in front of the building to make hints at the hardships of living in cities and fulfilling dreams. I tone down the colors to create a very disappointing scenario. The genearl feeling of this work will aim to achieve the a mixture of the floating population and their dreams which is in conflict with reality. One can find from the different parts of this photograph the varieties of unsettled feelings I hope to achieve.