Zhang Dali describes himself as an artist looking for “ways to express reality beyond reality”. Reality of a nation and of a people that have been through transformations of considerable magnitude in recent decades. A teenager during the Cultural Revolution, a student at Beijing Academy of Art and Design in the s, as the country was gradually opening up to the market economy, Zhang Dali witnessed the rise of modern China. Then in the early 90s, he moved for some years to Bologna, in Italy.
As he returned to Beijing in , he was shocked to discover that the city had been turned into a permanent construction site. The hutongs, these old working-class neighborhoods in the heart of the capital where people used to live a traditional and communitarian way of life, were being methodically torn down to make room for the buildings and infrastructures of a new economic paradigm.
For years, on the walls of these districts soon to be demolished, Zhang Dali used black spray paint to outline the profile of a giant face. A work inspired by graffiti, which he came across during his stay in Italy, making Zhang the first Chinese contemporary artist to ever appropri
A Second History
Keywords
manipulated photographs, alteration (process and technique), propaganda, altered prints, photography handworked, truthfulness and falsehood in art, china, Mao, Zedong , artists' books
Description
1 volume, pages. "In his book A Second History, Beijing-based artist, Zhang Dali, examines the widespread use of photographic manipulation carried out by the Chinese government during the regime of Mao Tse-tung (). Using a compare and contrast format this artist book presents a chronological sequence of original, unmodified images together with their doctored doppelgängers which were manipulated in party-run, photo labs in the 50s, 60s and 70s for the Chinese propaganda market." -- From
Press
North Vancouver, BC : Presentation House Gallery Toronto, ON : Bywater Bros. Editions, c
Rights
©Dali, Zhang. North Vancouver, BC: Presentation House Gallery; Toronto, ON: Bywater Bros. Editions.
Materials / Techniques
paper
A Second History
Notes
In Zhang Dali began to examine the role of photography as an instrument of state propaganda. History was re-written through censored, faked and doctored photographs. From the moment that Mao’s forces defeated the Nationalists in , the work of photographers had been understood as a political task, instrumental in shaping a new nation. A Second History () consists of one hundred and thirty chromogenic prints sourced from archives throughout China. Each print shows the censored photograph printed together with its unaltered negative. Backgrounds are changed; people removed (or sometimes added); black and white images become brightly coloured; extra pigs are added to pictures representing rural prosperity; portraits of Mao are pinned to the walls of poor farmhouses and enthusiastically clapping crowds are inserted into political rallies. A smiling Mao Zedong strides through landscapes alone, his companions purged from the photographic record. Reality was manipulated, inconvenient truths erased. Zhang Dali brought these fabrications into the light of day through a process of exhaustive research.
Accession number
Zhang Dali
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Zhang Dali was born in Harbin, China in He graduated from the painting department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing with a BA in An influential figure in socio-political artistic movements in China, Zhang Dali has, for decades, challenged the conventional with his social documentation in graffiti, sculpture, photography, and painting.
Zhang was exiled from China after graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and spent six years immersing himself in Western art and art history in Italy. Upon his return to Beijing, he developed a keen interest in portraiture (usually of himself), documentary and public urban art, often interrupting spaces with confrontational political statements. The photograph series &#;A Second History&#; consists of propaganda and found images under the rule of Mao, which have been doctored or altered to the Chairman&#;s artistic &#;vision&#; of politics and appropriation. He is critically recognized as one of China&#;s first graffiti and street artists.
In , Zhang Dali’s work was featured in New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in
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