Futuristic Allegory
2019
Migrant Bird Space / Beijing
Note / Hutongs Gray Cube
I stayed in Beijing for two months in the winter of 2019 to work on my solo exhibition. What was most interesting to me in Beijing was the housing style scattered throughout the old city of Beijing, called “Hutong”. The walls of the narrow alleys around the Royal Palace are uniformly painted gray, and the style of the communal housing within them is uniform. Some of them have been turned into tourist attractions, but many people still live there.
As I walked through the Hutongs, I found various things placed in front of the eaves and on the streets. They are daily necessities, furniture, and garbage that the residents happen to have placed there, but against the background of the gray walls of the Hutong, they look like anonymous sculptures that were accidentally created by the residents. Walking around the Hutong from this perspective, it seems as if the entire district is a huge installation work created by the lives, customs, and history of the people who live there. I coined it “gray cube”, not a white cube, and tried to use this imaginary installation for my exhibition.
The color gray is more easily associated with futuristic images to me. However, it seems that the color was actually chosen with the understanding that gray was not a color. During the dynastic period, the buildings in the castle where the royal family lived were decorated with gorgeous colors, while the poor people living around them were not allowed to use colors. It is said that the color gray was chosen to represent such class disparity. The futuristic look of the walls and the lifestyle of the people living in the Hutong seem to be in stark contrast. However, they also now have smartphones, pay with electronic money, and use internet shopping by Taobao. This impression of extremes seemed to symbolize modern China, and at the same time, I felt as if I was watching an allegory of the near future.
