Cyber Shanzhai
Cyber shanzhai — A Solo Exhibition of Tu Lang
2025
Key Visual Design (Poster, Social Media, and other promotional designs)
主視覺設計（海報、社交媒體以及其他設計）
Poster: 4-colour on paper
海報：四色噴墨印刷紙本
This exhibition is the degree show for PhD student Tu Lang for her doctoral research. Presented by a fictional start-up company called sitch. Cyber Shanzhai is a realm in between. A zone between the past, present and the future, it cannot be fully present; it has no being in itself. It is an imaginary mountain stronghold, a virtual land of imitation. A realm with representation, replication, counterfeiting, parodies and commodity fetishisation.
This research explores the metaphor of the Shanzhai myth and how it remains valuable in this era of rapidly accelerating technology in digital media. “Cyber-Shanzhai” takes the notion of the “isolated stronghold” and extends the metaphor to a pocket of internet culture, highlighting the emerging aesthetics of Shanzhai in contemporary digital media art.