Dislocation/Urban Experience

Aprile Gallant is the Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at SCMA.

Dislocation/Urban Experience: Contemporary Photographs from East Asia is the first exhibition in SCMA’s new Carol T. Christ Gallery for Asian Art which opened Friday, October 9. Named in honor of the former president of Smith College, the gallery honors her commitment to Smith as a global community and acknowledges the exponential growth in SCMA’s collections of art from Asia.

inverted black and white image of a tower standing high above other buildings in a city, against a night sky

^{Shi Guorui. Chinese, 20th century. Shanghai Tower 10-11, August 2013. Gelatin silver print camera obscura. Courtesy of the artist.}

Curated by Samuel C. Morse, SCMA’s Curatorial Consultant for Asian Art, Dislocation/Urban Experience focuses on the phenomenon of the megacity in China, Japan, and Korea. Today, East Asia is home to some of the largest metropolises on the planet. The population of Shanghai, the greatest in China, tops 22 million, but it is just one of five Chinese urban centers with populations over 10 million. While metropolitan Tokyo is no longer the largest city in East Asia, the megacity of Greater Tokyo remains the most expansive urban conglomeration in the world; one quarter of Japan’s entire population resides there. The population of Seoul is just over 10 million, yet the sprawling metropolitan area around the city houses more than 25 million people, almost half the residents of South Korea. Urbanization is not new in East Asia. However, its current scale is without precedent, and megacities are wreaking extreme pressures on the lives of people in China, Japan, and Korea.

Recording these changes in a variety of ways is a generation of photographers who have come of age during this period of rapid and unchecked urbanization. Some photograph the changing face of their cities: the high rise towers, theme parks, and rebuilt neighborhoods.

Others capture the lives of the residents, at home, on train platforms, or on the streets of the built-up landscape.

night, boy standing near a pole in the center of a series of yellow concentric circles

^{Kim Taedong. Korean, born 1978. Day Break #018, 2011. Digital pigment print. Purchased with the Carroll and Nolen Asian Art Acquisition Fund. SC 2016.16.1.}

Two figures standing on a train platform. Girl on right wears plaid scarf, grey jacket, dark skirt, white knee socks and black shoes with her hands in her pockets leaning against a colum and leaning toward a boy on left wearing a dark jacket and pants seen from the back with his proper right foot braced against the column

^{Mikiko Hara. Japanese, born 1967. Untitled from the series Primary Speaking, 1999. C-print mounted on aluminum. Purchased with the Carroll and Nolen Asian Art Acquisition Fund. SC 2015.5.1.}

Many reveal the disparities in the lives of the new urban dwellers. All capture the sense of dislocation that dominates the lives of the residents of East Asia’s megacities.

art gallery space. woman holds painting up to wall while man stands back and looks at what she is doing.

^{Preparators Stephanie Sullivan and Nick Sousanis working on the installation}

gallery space. framed artworks sitting on the ground waiting to be hung.

^{Installation in progress—the Carol T. Christ Gallery for Asian Art at SCMA}

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Dislocation/Urban Experience

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