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Travel

Photographer Fills an Abandoned Chinese City with Artistic Interventions

Andi Schmied documents the creation of four installations in the empty luxury resort town of Jing Jin City.
Images courtesy the artist.

100 miles southeast of Beijing, an empty luxury resort town called Jing Jin City has been waiting for guests. Since 2004, the space’s 4000 villas, Hyatt Regency resort spa, horse race track, golf park, all in various states of completion, have been still and quiet. On second glance, however, one might notice that nothing is overgrown or wild: immaculately cut lawns sit inside concrete shells of buildings, and curtains have been ironed with care.

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“It is not a ghost town, but has a life of its own,” describes photographer Andi Schmied, who trekked to Jing Jin City twice in 2014 to document its mysterious pulse. The illusion of the 'living city' is sustained by the group of gardeners and guards who dwell in the village. At the end of their shifts, she observes, they become the city's residents, turning the buildings they protect and preserve into their own homes.

During his trips, Schmied herself altered the landscape, leaving behind a wall of bricks, a mosaic of tiles on the floor, and other subtle installations. “In between the two trips, parts of my interventions fell, materials weathered," she explains, "while vegetation grew and ice melted, and new constructions appeared built by the people living there." Her new art book, a collaboration with artist Lawrence Lek (who in the past created playable open-world art galleries and virtual reality cities), is both a portrait of Jing Jin and a metaphor for inhabiting the uninhabited.

Andi Schmied's Jing Jin City is on view in conversation with Sofia Valiente's Miracle Village at the Daniel Blau Gallery until February 13th.

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