-- Artist Statement
This is a series of works about daily life, and by “daily life” I don’t mean anything necessarily extraordinary or overly cynical either. The title comes from part of a well-known Chinese idiom - “东窗事发” dong chuang shi fa - in English means something like the plot has been exposed or something has ‘come to light’. In this era of explosive information overload, we often feel the repetition of life, boredom, or numbness, so people seem to always be looking forward to the emergence or expectation of something else, some other form of stimulation, while gradually numbing to our surroundings and existence before us. If we can assume both the role of spectator and participant to understand everyday life around, the "surprise" of life lies therein and is in fact all around us.
These photographs I conceived as if drifting through daily life from both the inside and out, as an objective bystander in the world, yet living as an active participant in this world as well. The most interesting part of this perspective is that I am able to look at my surroundings as a theater, a stage, and as time goes by, the storyline is constantly expanding, and I am part of the story/history. This so-called daily life is the world every day world that continually unfolds to creates our history. Although individually we and the ordinary events around us are often very small, but with a certain vantage point, everything can be seen as integral to the ongoing creation of history. What we tend to most easily overlook is the ordinary daily life all around us, and history and culture is the accumulation of this daily life unfolding before us.
Architecture in our surroundings also plays a large part influencing the space of any city and the our human landscape/environment. I was attracted by the amount of construction of various kinds of space in Chinese cities and towns, transient surroundings being torn down or resurrected or relocated, crowds of buildings under construction, as well as houses sitting between old streets full of electric wires……Thick advertisements on walls, neon boxes hang in the alley without end. Though amidst this disorder and construction there is a kind of beauty in China, which is not only a visual phenomena, but also from the trace of lives found therein
Huang Xiaoliang 黄晓亮 was born in Xiangxi, Hunan province in 1985. He is a 2009 graduate from Qingdao University, where he studied Digital Media. In 2010, Huang was awarded the prestigious Tierney Fellowship as well as the Three Shadows Photography Award, and the Fang Jun Art Award by the Beijing Today Art Museum. In 2011 Huang Xiaoliang was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Huang Xiaoliang currently divides his time between Changsha and Beijing.
More information: Huang Xiaoliang’s works on M97 Gallery website
