Huaqiangbei
Di Fang
China, 2022
15 minutes

Huaqiangbei is a film by Shenzhen-based artist Di Fang and was commissioned by MoMS for the group exhibition Global Shadow, Local Mist, earlier this year. The film will be viewable online into 2023, marking 3 years since the emergence of Covid-19. 

Huaqiangbei - known as ‘The first electronic street in China’ - is the largest electronic market in the world. The pandemic over the past years has had a great impact on business in the market. The film centres on Shandong, who came to Shenzhen to work as a young man and had to close down shops temporarily because of the severe impact. The film explores the wave of store closures and pandemic prevention and control in Huaqiangbei in 2022.

Fang Di is a Chinese artist who is currently working in Shenzhen, China. His work discusses racism and social hierarchy through studies on news and political affairs. By switching between identities like a chameleon, he moves smoothly among different social classes, absorbing and resolving peopleʼs desires and wisdom gained through migration with his sensitivity. He uses various artistic languages to explore the entanglement and meaning of urban life and bravely discovers how special groups are defined under globalisation and nationalism in this inverted reality, which has become an inevitable social fracture today.

Fang Di has produced many solo shows including: The Golden Bowl at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai, 2019), DÀ Qi DÀ LUÒ at Vanguard Gallery (Shanghai, 2017), Lost in Shenzhen presented by Jiu Society at 33 Art Space (Shenzhen, 2016), HIT ME! at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, 2013). His group shows include Macalline Art Center (Beijing, 2022), Kunstverein in Hamburg (Hamburg, 2021), OCAT (Shenzhen, 2020), Kulturforum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin, 2019), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester, 2019), Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2018), Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, 2018), Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen, 2017), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen, 2017), Today Art Museum (Beijing, 2015), Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, 2015), Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow, 2014), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, 2013).

Fangʼs films have been screened at the Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, 2014) and Pantalla Fantasma (Basque Country, 2014). He is a recipient of the New Star Award (2017), Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship (2013), and a finalist of Huayu Youth Award (2018) and Yishu 8 Award (2018). And he has been a resident artist at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California, 2014) and Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York, 2013). Fang received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. He is also a co-founder of the collective Jiu Society.