Yang Che-Yi

Yang Che-Yi works with photography, video, sound and installation. Repeatedly, he examines his home country Taiwan and China, with regard to the field of tension between economic boom, unbridled capitalism, and the accompanying threat to and destruction of unique landscapes.
In Empty City Strategy 空城計, among other things Yang shows a series of large-format photos, concrete models and videos, taken in the Chinese town of Ordos. Situated by the Yellow River in the region of Inner Mongolia, on the one hand Ordos is a giant ghost town; paradoxically, however, it is also one of the government’s prestigious projects and a model of economic success.
In the photos, the graphic structures of the sober architecture – some high-rise buildings still covered in scaffolding – are accentuated. In the video the artist allows the camera to hover over the huge, ghostly city layout like a bird of prey, circling the buildings and steel frames, and directing our view towards the empty four lane highways and freshly planted saplings, which are to become a forest in the middle of the steppe one day.