Article 6: Decolonizing Shanghai: Design and Material Culture in the Photographs of Hu Yang

 

Tai, E. (2009). Decolonizing Shanghai: Design and Material Culture in the Photographs of Hu Yang. Design Issues, 25(3), 30-43.

An author who lives in Shanghai won many designs and academic awards from Tulane University and Harvard University. Earl Tai like to leave a lasting impression on this word and on people with his project. He thinks that if something does not have communal value, it may be boring. Also, Tai interested in exploring and try different materials. Trying different things together enjoyable for Tai such as, historical and philosophical or ethical or poetical. (building the good city, 2010)

Image 1: http://buildingthegoodcity.typepad.com/building-the-good-city/2010/05/insight-earl-tai.html

The main objectives of Earl Tai’s ‘Decolonizing Shanghai’ is that analyze different cultures which situated in the same city. Gender, social class, age, life’s quality, education level and another many kinds of factors play significant role emergence of different cultures.

All countries have own culture. This paper focuses the materials which were used for design in Shanghai such as, fabric, plants, furniture, colors, etc.

Hu Yang’s collection of five-hundred photographs called “Shanghai Living”. Photographs focus the details of fabric, plants, furniture, colors instead of focus just people.

Image2: http://www.chine-nouvelle.com/chine/insolite/2008-09-29-hu-yang-shanghai-living.html

The main goals of the artist are not capturing high quality or conceptual photographs. The main aim is transmitting different emotions between materials and people which live in different zones.

The author mentioned that how history and modern can combine together between objects. Also, he emphasizes the importance of objects of antiquity in the spaces.

‘’The most salient example of this is the portrait of Claude Hudelot, a French diplomat who has taken the Chinese name Yu Dele. Photographed in his parlor seated in a seventeenth-century Ming-style chair, Hudelot is surrounded by his Chinese cultural artifacts: a wooden altar table, a blue and white covered porcelain jar, an orchid and three bonsai, a pair of hexagonal ceramic planters, a number of figurines of Chairman Mao, a silkscreen of Mao and Dong Biwu, a wooden birdcage, and photographs of old architectural details. To complete the picture, Hudelot himself has chosen to be photographed bedecked in a white Chinese tunic set, complete with matching socks and Chinese shoes from a past era. Hudelot, an avowed devotee of traditional Chinese culture, pays his respects to the culture by surrounding himself with artifacts of a bygone Chinese past from the Mao era and dynastic eras, even down to the garments enveloping his body.’’ (Tai, 2009)

Hybridities define using different types of styles and historical element together. And one of a photograph from Yang’s collection was defined by the author as an example of the topic.

‘’Stephen Slemon offers some mediation to Tiffin's concept of a resistant hybridity through his rejection of an automatic assumption of synonymity between postcolonial acts and resistance acts.7 The former acknowledge ways in which one cultural group may adopt or integrate values of another cultural group; while the latter describes radical acts of resistance against a colonizing culture.’’ (Tai, 2009)

IKEA was given as a good example of Hybridities by the author. Although IKEA is a Swedish company, it reflects many different styles. The company does not produce a product just for one country. It aims to be modern and usable from every user in the world.

Questions:

1   1.  Because of some kind of companies like IKEA are we losing our cultural design elements?

2   2. The details which are using in design elements how can affect our physiology?

References:

Insight: Earl Tai (28 May 2010) Available at http://buildingthegoodcity.typepad.com/building-the-good-city/2010/05/insight-earl-tai.html (Accessed date: 26 October 2017)