Some Days 1
Wang Ningde
王宁德
Production date
2002
Object Detail
Media
gelatin silver print
Measurements
50 x 40 cm
Notes
Wang Ningde’s black and white silver gelatine prints, with their slight sepia tone, are instantly understood as connoting the past; his staging of posed figures in carefully designed settings may be read as cinematic slices of a larger narrative. Their deliberate artificiality hints at the absurd juxtapositions found in dreams, but they are also Wang’s comment on Chinese history: he shares a dark sense of humour with other Chinese writers, artists and film-makers who reflect on the psychic scars left by the Cultural Revolution. This was a time, he says, that caused ‘catastrophic change and distortion in people’s psychological states.’ Wang Ningde combines sardonic wit with sadness, a satirical view of past absurdities with tenderness. Some Days 1 (2002), for example, is a melancholy meditation on family. Seated either side of an ornate table, as if formally posed for a studio photograph, a heavily made-up, qipao-clad woman and a Mao-suited man seem to be asleep. A naked child, also sleeping, is seated on the floor between them. Behind them, a small boy in an anachronistic striped T-shirt seems to be a shadow. Is he an apparition from the present-day entering a remembered moment of the past?
Accession number
2017.040