Thursday, September 4, 2008

A Clean Beijing


From the moment I left the airport, I was shocked by the clean green Beijing that had replaced the old drive to city central which was dusty and brown, made worse by the construction along the road ways. Now, I saw what all the dirt was about--planting millions of flowers, shrubs and trees to give the impression of a well-tended modern city.

At 798 Art District, the mud was gone. In the spring, every street there was being replaced and after rain storms you needed knee high boots to trudge around to see paintings. Last night, at the opening of Kim Sooja's show at Continua Gallery, everyone was in bare-toed sandals. Kim Sooja's photographs of the streets of Mumbai made a certain sense in Beijing. She has always used fabric--bundles, clothing, homeless tents--as a metaphor for the world converging in a single spot. Here, the pictures of alley ways filled with laundry hanging on every wall and sleeping beggars bundled in bright colored wraps echoed the old Beijing which existed no that long ago with let-it-all hangout hutongs dominating the city. I remember when I first came to 798 in 2004 and there were still laundries packing the streets right next to small scale production plants.

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