Elisabeth Czihak - Endless Line

Endless Line

Chinese cities are cities in transformation – transformation in a dimension and velocity which fascinates and frightens us at the same time. The city’s image permanently avoids documentation, it disintegrates and recomposes itself each moment.
The series „Endless Line“ shows several diptychs, each consisting of one photograph and one digitally drawn graphic work. Subject of the photographs are villages in the outskirts of Beijing, destroyed due to reasons of urban planning and the city’s expansion: the attempt of a snap-shot, the recording of a city’s fragment in its intermediate state, questions about the former inhabitants and a „before“ and „after“.
The graphic works deal with the ornament of the „endless line“, which has been used in traditional chinese architecture for the design of doors and windows and which stands as a symbol for long-lasting prosperity. In my modifications and variations the endless line leaves the original symmetry, the harmonious appearance is disturbed by transforming it. To illustrate the time aspect of a city in transformation the originally closed endless line has been interrupted and leads out of the sheet, we don’t know where to.