The Perth Centre for Photography is pleased to present Gengzi Picture of Modern Exiles by Tami Xiang. This exhibition opens on Friday 11 December at 6 pm. RSVP by email is essential.

Peasantography: Family Portrait addresses the situation of the 61 million Chinese Left-Behind Children in the countryside, who are raised up by their grandparents and only see their parents once a year or once every few years.  These images are interwoven with a portrait of the children with their grandparents, a portrait of their parents, train tickets and an image of their house as the woven background. 

Gengzi Picture of Modern Exiles addresses the situation of the 300 million Chinese domestic migrant works from the countryside, who do not have the same access to public welfare due to the household registration system which differentiates the people from the rural areas and urban areas. These migrant workers working in the cities when they are still young, however, most of them have to go back to live the countryside with much worse living conditions when they lose the ability to work in the cities. The disparity in treatment in education and welfare within the hukou system has resulted in tens of millions of LBC in the countryside, during the Chinese Spring festival every year, most of them go back to their hometown where their parents and children are left behind.  

Gengzi Picture of Modern Exiles appropriated the Picture of Exiles (1943) created by Chinese famous artist Jiang Zhaohe, depicting the exile condition of Chinese refugees during the 1943 famine. In 2017, Three million migrant workers who were forcibly exiled back to their hometown from Beijing. Xiang photographed the ruined doors and collected images of migrant workers on their trips with the weaving bags and the used paint buckets which are treated as treasures by the migrant workers, even the bags and used paint buckets are regarded as rubbish in the cities. Xiang appropriated these images into the Picture of Exile, to communicate with the people in history, also questioning the reality.  

Tami Xiang is a Perth based Chinese-Australian artist and academic scholar, she is currently undertaking a PhD by research at UWA. Tami’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Mainland China, France, Taiwan and the U.S. Tami has been invited as a featured artist to many photography festivals such as Head On photo festival in Sydney, Lianzhou International Photography Festival in China. Her work has been published on the New York Times and the Eye of Photography in France and Artlink in Australia. Her work is mainly socially engaged art, which deals with social issues especially those whose voices can not be said in public, her works are trying to raise awareness and justice for the people who are suffering and under repression.