Zone of Mysticism
lightbox installation, 2023
@_KABK_GD_Good-Soup_Graduation-Show_2023
China is perceived as having the world’s largest irreligious population. Due to gentrification and modernisation in big urban cities, efforts to purge superstitious practices have been made by the government. One such practice is fortune telling. Whether the enforced policies of dissolving the local fortune tellers’ businesses are justified or ruinous, it’s alarming that an urban street vernacular is vanishing. This phenomenon of lost urban graphics pushes us to commemorate such visual street vernacular and preserve this graphic history.
Zone of Mysticism represents a designer’s way of preserving Chinese culture by documenting Chinese fortune telling practices through a reimagined vernacular visual language unique to these businesses. It captures the fleeting nature of graphic customs, ensuring their preservation. Within this visual language, Zinmong expresses his odic crystal gazing at an unorthodox and queer future, inviting us to ponder its potential existence.
READ Allegories in the Face Saloon HERE
#installation
#signmaking
#lightbox
#visual language
#fortune telling
#street vernacular