Wandering Baishizhou

Wandering Baishizhou is a project realized during a period of residence in Shenzen within an urban village destined by the Chinese government to be demolished within a few years. Urban villages are densely populated agglomerations generally located within modern Asian metropolises. Baishizhou is one of the more than one hundred villages in Shenzhen area, which represents one of the great machines of the growing development of the megalopolis thanks to good rents and immigrants, workers and young creatives. Dilapidated, dirty, overcrowded, colorful, deeply human, Baishizhou generates a strong short circuit with the opulent westernized wealth of the rest of the metropolis by posing strong questions to the city's identity and therefore destined to disappear at the will of centralized power that tends to make more shined the image of Shenzhen, a symbolic city and a project studied at the table of Chinese economic progress. Invited by Handshake 302, artistic and collective creative residency of artists, architects and anthropologists, Italian artist Sabrina Muzi project involved the local community in relational and performative actions. The artist created clothes made with old clothes and small objects donated by the inhabitants, then worn by some residents who roamed the streets, rooftops and narrow alleys of the village.
The artist has created ghost figures, protectors of the village, which as magical wu (ancient Chinese shamans) integrate into the urban 'fabric', referring to the ancient beliefs of popular religion that moves from shamanism and Taoist tradition as well as to the cult of the ancestors and spirits that with their effigies attend every door of Chinese housing, becoming the spirit of the place. The project, developed in different phases, has given life, as well as performance, to a video and a photographic project of which the presented image is part.