Surrealist strategies to capture the urban experience of Shanghai: Hybridization and polymorphism in the contemporary metropolis public space

This article examines a personal practice-based research developed during the 2010s that explores the contemporary urban experience of the metropolis of Shanghai, identifying features and attributes of its public space from the inhabitant perspective. The urban space of Shanghai, in connection with the surreal, is labyrinthine, interconnected and heterogeneous. It has an ambiguous hierarchy and order, where anything can be linked to another, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is simulated. Culturally polymorphic and borderline, this space does not belong to any particular historical place or period. It only exists in the present, in continuity, in constant transformation, on scales where the small, accessible and domestic coexist with the territorial, public and impenetrable. The support of these spaces of hybrid nature where the technological, the animal and the vegetal coexist is the city in constant expansion, which assimilates the transformation for the development of activity and where masses of people and vehicles stream from everywhere in every direction. Through photography and digital manipulation techniques, the project captures and enhances the perception of the atmosphere and spatial relationships as elements that condition activity patterns in their inhabitants along with sociocultural guidelines. On the other hand, chromatic and surface/print media treatments explore aesthetic aspects related to elements of traditional and popular artistic representation characteristic of East Asian cultures. Thus, together with highly contrasting styles of black and white and even negatives, bright and sharp colours coexist with strongly contrasted and outlined contours over metallic supports that evoke everything from the traditional to the technological.