WAKE UP SHANGHAI | Orangerie du Sénat, Paris (France) | 2006
Exhibition curator + Artist book editor: Lina López
Photographer: Giacomo Rambaldi
The book, published by “Gli Ori”, reflects the interest of Lina López and Giacomo Rambaldi in China’s contemporary art tendency to distance itself from the usual canons, into the domain of everyday life habits and manners.
It gathers a series of photographs taken in Shanghai. The common thread is the “Jia Jiu Fu”, literally, “dress as if you were at home” an alternative dress code that was quietly led, quite naturally, in the streets of Shanghai. Men seated at doorsteps, women shopping at the market, children playing in neighborhood streets… all in their pajamas. In 2008, just before the Beijing Olympics, this custom was banned by the authorities in order to show a renewed face of a country that would be in the sights of the whole world.
The interesting and unusual documentation gathered by Lina López and Giacomo Rambaldi, reflects the ambiguity of the great changes that China faces in times of great transformations.
