zhixin sheng
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invisible cities
utopian being I
utopian being II
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the sensualists: a book of prayer
the firework city
→ photography
luminous
zhixin sheng
home
→ installation
invisible cities
utopian being I
utopian being II
→ text and image
the sensualists: a book of prayer
the firework city
→ photography
luminous
the firework city
selected photos and design
The Firework City is a hybrid chapbook that explores how language and visual translation can convey different notions of nostalgia and hybrid identity. Formally, the project draws from the literary genre of lyric essays, specifically its fragmented tradition. It engages with the fantastical and constructive potential of memory by re-fragmenting archival images and re-purposing cropped photographs.
This project revolves around Changsha, the city where I was born. Historically, it was burned to the ground during WWII, an important piece of history now often consigned to oblivion. Today it is hailed as the entertainment capital of China, attracting mass tourism through its pop culture spectacles. By working with physical archival images, photographs of urban corners, and textual translations of image fragments floating in memory, I seek to investigate both historical oblivion and the ‘becoming’ nature of nostalgia—how it simultaneously informs and evolves with identity. Through this process, I also come to be interested in the interplay between text and image, the formal potential of both to evoke and build a multi-layered landscape of memory.
view the full project here
This project revolves around Changsha, the city where I was born. Historically, it was burned to the ground during WWII, an important piece of history now often consigned to oblivion. Today it is hailed as the entertainment capital of China, attracting mass tourism through its pop culture spectacles. By working with physical archival images, photographs of urban corners, and textual translations of image fragments floating in memory, I seek to investigate both historical oblivion and the ‘becoming’ nature of nostalgia—how it simultaneously informs and evolves with identity. Through this process, I also come to be interested in the interplay between text and image, the formal potential of both to evoke and build a multi-layered landscape of memory.
view the full project here