The History of Monuments

Wang Qingsong was born in 1966 in Heilongjiang, China. He is a contemporary avant-garde artist with diverse practices such as photography, sculpture and painting. His photographic scenes are imbued with the spirit of mundane and even vulgar life, mocking the contradictions and prejudices in Chinese societies, especially people’s obsession with consumerism. For this photography piece, exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei and scheduled to close on February 6, 2013 (http://www.mocataipei.org.tw/blog/post/28329768), Wang invited 200 ordinary people to pose as models. The monumental embossment-like piece is 125cm high and 42m long. It is constructed of 15 films, shot by 8x10 large format camera, and developed and printed in a whole roll of untrimmed film paper. It is probably the longest single-printed contemporary conceptual photography work.