Jiao Dongzi | 2024 Residency
Switzerland | Visual Arts
Visual Arts
Nationality: China
Residency location: TBD
Jiao Dongzi was born in Henan and now lives in Tianjin. She graduated from the Art and Design College of Dalian Polytechnic of Technology. Photographic works have been exhibited at home and abroad such as the Peabody Museum in the United States (2022-2023), Photoville Festival in New York (2018), Lianzhou Foto Festival (2019), Ningbo International Photography Week (2017), and Lishui International Photography Festival (2013). Photography festivals and exhibitions of art institutions. Selected for the 2018 Magnum Foundation Tuoying Documentary Mentorship Program. Initiator of “We Are Together” and “Image Bridge” public welfare photography projects. She is a frequent contributor to the media in her areas of concern.
Her photographic works focus on rural areas, farmers and female groups. In the form of images and texts, through repeated and detailed observations of this group, continuous description and writing, she tries to review and reflect on her own origin, hoping to solve the confusion and reach a settlement.
The residency project “Native Born” is a continuation of the “Father’s Village” project she started filming in 2018. Since 2018, she has photographed her father as a farmer and a peasant artist, and learned about the great changes in rural China and the embarrassing situation of farmers in the process of urbanization.
In China, being a farmer is a relatively humble status, while in Switzerland, being a farmer could be a more respected profession. Are there similarities behind different social identities? The project hopes to explore the relationship between farmers and land under different economic backgrounds, the plight and way out of farmers in the process of urbanization, the fragility of small farmers’ economy in the face of capital, and the fate of individuals in different economic backgrounds through the observation and exchange of farmers in China and Switzerland. The struggle and compromise under the torrent of the times.
