Chàizhōu Art / Chàizhōu Daily
Hanyu Tao
Chàizhōu Art / Chàizhōu Daily is a multimedia art project set in a fictional city that serves as a symbolic composite of all Chinese cities affected by forced demolitions over the past fifteen years. Every location in this project is fictitious, every name anonymized, yet all photographs, interviews, and events are based on real-life testimonies and historical truths.
The project exists in two parallel realities. On one side is Chàizhōu Art, a fictional state-sponsored exhibition that presents a polished, celebratory narrative of demolition and reconstruction—where progress is unquestioned, and collective memory is filtered through propaganda. On the other side lies Chàizhōu Daily, a local newspaper that disrupts this narrative, exposing what the official story omits: the suffering, dispossession, and erasure experienced by individuals under the shadow of national development.
Through field interviews, documentary photography, illustration, and reconstructed reportage, Chàizhōu Art / Chàizhōu Daily explores the complex realities of forced eviction—not only what is gained and lost, but who is remembered and who is forgotten. As an artist’s inquiry into narrative, authorship, and archive, this project seeks to reclaim truth from silence, and reimagine how we document power, absence, and survival.