Sitting on the Wall, by Weng Feijun (Weng Fen)

Color photography

23/07/20 - Weng Peijun, known as Weng Fen, is an artist bon in Hainan, China, in 1961. Since the end of the 90s, his photographic works have focused on urbanization and the portrait of the big cities from afar, specially from a landscape enclosed by a wall. Thus he seeks to exemplify the paradox destruction/construction by men, sacrificing a natural (green) habitat to give birth to skyscrapers. These buildings of steel and concrete represent the home of new inhabitants, those who migrate from other cities to live in the modern industrial centers that are popping up in the new Capitalist China.  

Wen Fen places a human figure, much like Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) used to do with his little man facing the vastness of the sea or the mountains, overwhelmed by Nature. In this case, a teenage girl on her back, sits on the wall to observe the skyscrapers. She seems to be grasping her fragility as opposed to overwhelming growth of her country. 

Weng Fen's work is recognized in the Western art market because of this significant representation of Asian new urbanization. Each one of his photos reaches high prices in auctions and are part of private collection and exhibitions in American museums. 

However, the girl on her back is always a high school student. We see her uniform and her books on the floor. To us, she represents the innocence of youth facing those mega-constructions. But for others, she is a pornographic image translated in her pose, her hands, her turning face and the opportunism of the moment. Weng Fen was banned in China. 

Sitting on the Wall, by Weng Feijun (Weng Fen)

Sitting on the Wall - Shenzhen (1), by Weng Fen (2002)

Measures: 58 x 74 cm,  2/10