ENTRY DESCRIPTION
CO-EXISTENCE is a series of photographs that focus on alienation, spectacle, modern syndromes, and the coexistence between humans and nature. The work is inspired by the exploration of Merleau-Ponty's concept of "the flesh of the world," the examination of the global depression triggered by COVID-19, and the reflection on modernity and industrial society. At the height of the epidemic, the photographer documented the desolate landscape of the city's shutdown: the ruins of unfinished buildings, abandoned industrial areas, and the mangrove waterfront areas suffering from severe ecological damage... The potential risks of modernization and modernity, once obscured by prosperity and bustle, are now emerging from the bottomless darkness built up by frenzy.
It's not just cities that have been hit by the epidemic. The protagonists in this series are part of the latest wave of young migrant workers in China who have suffered unemployment, bankruptcy, depression and severe debt crisis during the epidemic. Restricted by the strict travel policy, the photographer took the photographs in different rooms: an erotic hotel, an empty room in an abandoned building, and the bathroom of a rented apartment. In the post-processing stage, the photographer embedded these bodies in the desolate landscapes of the city's shutdown to obtain these pictures.In this project, the bodies are penetrated and torn part, the broken flesh is embedded in the desolate industrialized landscape, thus an allegory of "isolation" and "coexistence" is written.
In addition to sociological observation, CO-EXISTENCE is also a semiotic experimentation with images to explore the metaphor of “body” and the construction of spectacle. Through the dismemberment and reconstruction of the body and the landscape, a spectral universe generated by the symbolic system, sensory experience and imagination is constructed outside the daily order. The flesh of the world, thus broken, is thus re-created.

AUTHOR
Born in 1996, Qin Zhang is a Shenzhen-based visual artist, director, and photographer who works primarily with film, photography, and 3D art. Qin focuses on the nature of image - its role as a communication medium, as a language and sign system, as a social landscape - and the role it plays in social research and social mechanisms. By processing, deconstructing and reconstructing images, she constructs new space-time in her works to dissolve the boundaries of physical space-time, and explores more possibilities about the language of image. On the other hand, Qin also focuses on the myth of modernity and its hidden risks, surveillance and technological violence, and the spiritual crisis of modern individuals.

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