Fairy Tales in Red Times - Cyan
Shao Yinong; Muchen;
邵译农; 慕辰;
Production date
2003-2007
Object Detail
Media
hand-coloured photograph
Measurements
160 x 120 cm
Notes
For Fairy Tales in Red Times Shao Yinong and Muchen used a nostalgic technique: the hand-colouring favoured by early Chinese photographic studios. Each day, in the morning and afternoon, the artists encountered students from a special needs school close to their Beijing studio. These children, who were vision or hearing impaired, or intellectually disabled, seemed happy and carefree, in contrast to the anxiety and gloom that Shao and Muchen saw in Chinese adults and the spoiled only children of the newly wealthy. They began to consider the relationship between physical and psychological health, and how the traumas of the past lie just below the surface of the present-day, shooting dozens of photographs of the children attending the school, before selecting just six. These were printed on a monumental scale that was intended to evoke the giant portraits of Mao, Lenin and Marx that the artists recall from their own childhoods. Here each photograph is named by colour, referencing the printing process but also emphasising the anonymity of the children; they are individuals, with their own histories, but they also represent the vulnerable and marginalised. Despite the artists’ observations of the real children as cheerful and friendly, they have represented them as poignant. Fairy Tales in Red Times—Cyan seems an imperfect lost soul: he stares sadly into the camera with lopsided eyes, his rosy painted cheeks and haloed background failing to conceal a deep melancholy.
Accession number
2015.181