Dubravka Vidović

Shikumen’s Walls series #4

2010 – 2011, Photography, lambda print mounted on Dibond and covered with pleXiglass Courtesy of Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea

Shikumen’s Walls series #14

2014, Photography, lambda print mounted on Dibond and covered with pleXiglass Courtesy of Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea

Shikumen’s Walls series #5

2010 – 2011, Photography, lambda print mounted on Dibond and covered with pleXiglass Courtesy of Podbielski Contemporary

Shikumen’s Walls series #15

2014, Photography, lambda print mounted on Dibond and covered with plexiglass, Private collection

Scala inutile

2020, Old bricks, golden leaf. Courtesy the artist.

Arco

2020, Iron, bricks. Courtesy the artist

IMAGO MUNDI COLLECTION

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The Shikumen’s Walls series originates in a poetic interaction with the surfaces of the encrusted walls of the shikumen, traditional houses that are symbols of the now lost old Shanghai, which has been overtaken by modern construction in recent years. The photographic series documents a temporary installation of an urban intervention consisting of different objects – books, fabrics, laces – that were inserted into the gaps between the walls’ bricks. The old bricks that remain from the once imposing shikumen houses tell a story about territory, globalization and borders, but especially about the fragility of home, both as an ephemeral architectural structure and as a mental construct in terms of national identity.

Dubravka Vidović (1970, Zara, Croatia) lives and works in Shanghai, China, and Milan, Italy. She works with photography, installation, video assemblage and archives. She has exhibited at OCT Contemporary Museum, ArtCN Gallery and Bank Mabsociety in Shanghai; Podbielski Contemporary in Berlin and Milan; Galleria Alberto Peola, Turin; the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb and Art Gallery of the National Museum Zadar, Croatia. She conceives of photography as a transformative space, arranging ephemeral interventions and installations before taking shots, which allows her to capture her formae mentis, the contents she wishes to convey.