Month: December 2014

January 16, 2015 — February 13, 2015

Jing Jin City and Miracle Village are new photographic projects by two young contemporary artists, Andi Schmied and Sofia Valiente, which we are thrilled to present concurrently in a unique exhibition in January 2015.

Andi Schmied and Sofia Valiente are both interested in communities and social spaces, but have very individual approaches to documentation and intervention. Andi is concerned with architectural and urban spaces, whereas Sofia’s work depicts human faces and relationships. The artists each spent time living in the places they photographed. These procedural and artistic comparisons are particularly apparent and compelling when the projects are viewed together.

Andi Schmied’s Jing Jin City comprises photographs of Jing Jin, which is situated about an hour’s drive from Beijing. The city is home to a development of 3,000 luxury villas, alongside a Hyatt Regency hotel, golf courses, entertainment complexes and the other usual trappings of a wealthy suburban town. The villas form part of an initiative by the local district government, which envisioned Jing Jin as a “new city” built to embody ideals of environmental sustainability as well as material comfort.

Andi’s project will be presented in dialogue with Sofia Valiente’s Miracle Village. The small community of Miracle Village is located on the outskirts of a rural town in an impoverished area of Palm Beach County, Florida. It is currently home to over 100 sex offenders, who for legislative reasons have been unable to find housing elsewhere. The law obliges offenders to live a minimum distance of at least 1,000 feet from any place where children congregate, such as schools or bus stops. In practice, this is very difficult to comply with, and many of these individuals struggle to find a place to live and to re-establish themselves in society. Miracle Village was developed under Fabrica’s Editorial Area.