Blood-stained Shirt
2018
A crowd gathers among the rubble of a half-collapsed building, a banner overhead reading “Let China walk towards the world! Let the world understand China.” Winter coats, bandages, wheelchairs, and debris crowd the frame. Made in 2018, the photograph reads as a tableau of cost — the human wreckage left in the path of national ambition and global reach.
Blood-stained Shirt, 180×300cm, 2018
Artist’s Statement
A second time to work overseas since 2008. Ten years have passed. I was very fortunate to have worked with a group of people from Michigan, the US in realizing a photo shoot in a cold winter in 2018.
The following report by Angie Baecker situates the work in the landscape of post-industrial Detroit and the Sanders Factory ruins in Highland Park, and traces its dialogue with Wang Shikuo’s Blood-stained Shirt (1950s–70s):
“In winter 2017, as the Distinguished Artist of the University of Michigan, Qingsong visited Detroit and Highland Park several times along with U-M students and staff, looking for warehouse-like settings with industrial appeal to stage a new shooting ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ He explored those areas of Detroit established in the 19th century in the wake of the railroad boom and then relocated in the 1960s, as part of urban renewal efforts. These sites and deserted settings resonated with Qingsong who is drawn to urban landscapes in transition, cities on the move grappling with issues of social unrest. He eventually found a site in Highland Park on the remains of the former Sander’s Factory to stage this new piece. On February 17th, Qingsong invited about 50 local people from Detroit and 40 from the U-M.”
“The contrast and similarity between Highland Park and Cao Chang Di, two inner cities within metro Detroit and Beijing, which have both interesting histories in the tumultuous times in the past and at present, have inspired the artists of both communities to create a new piece discussing the possibility of artistic revival of old cities at the new times.”
“Inspired by a classical drawing created by Wang Shikuo (1911–1973), a Chinese realist painter, Qingsong recreates a new image, instilling contemporary urban life into a representative piece portraying social and political exploitation, change and transition. In the neighborhoods of Highland Park, extensive vacancy and abandonment have led to new ways that people remake disinvested space — ruins voyeurism gives way to residents, artists, and entrepreneurs curating spaces in their own vision and as template for the future of the city. This project ended up in both this photography and related archives will contribute to the hope for another narrative to city building, one that uncovers traces of the past, its erasures and demolitions, while engaging with the community through artistic practice to construct a new, vibrant vision for urban regeneration.”
— Angie Baecker
Socialist Art from China, Remade in Michigan