DUSTIN SHUM | SHOPPING WONDERLAND
According to Dustin Shum, whose photos were taken in small towns in the Guangdong region, there is a self-contradiction between the existence of over-luxurious gigantic shopping malls and the relatively small social context in which they exist. The temples of consumption seen everywhere in these small towns are nothing more than mere iconic monuments for a non-exist worshiper. Shum finds this phenomenon a sign for the town leaders’ self-defined affluent status instead of a reflection of genuine demand from the people. He compares this phenomenon to the pitch of the black stone monument that appears in front of the collective gazes of the apes in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, an image that reminds him of “a grasp of killing techniques and the knowledge of enclosure and plundering”. The shopping malls, as in the black stone monument grasped firmly by the sub-human ape in Kubrick’s film, “magically masquerade into a RMB bank note lifted lightly in the two fingers of a Chinese capitalist”, according to Shum.
Dustin Shum graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Degree in Photographic Design. Having been a photojournalist for more than ten years, he now works as a freelance photographer. He has been awarded many honours for outstanding documentary photography over the years, including awards by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association (2003, 2007) and Amnesty International. Solo exhibitions held include “Alias: Xianggang” (2003) ,“Photogenic Olympians” (2009) and “Blocks” (2011). Shum has published several catalogues including Live Alone a Life: People with Mental Illness (2007), and Themeless Parks: Photographs by Dustin Shum (2008). He also participated in many local and international joint exhibitions including “Imaging Hong Kong”(2008), Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial (2010), City Flâneur: Social Documentary Photography (2010), Pingyao International photography Festival (2008 & 2011), “Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea” (2009, organized by SFMoMA) , Savignano SI Fest (2010) and Asolo Art Film Festival (2011) in Italy . His works are collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and private collectors.