ZHU JIA ::::
born in 1963, Beijing
lives and works in Beijing

Zhu Jia, a Beijing-based multimedia artist, has been working on projects that testify to the current urbanization process in China and its impact on individual lives and mental states. For the second Guangzhou triennial (2004-2006), he produced a sitespecific installation that reflects the reality of the lives of migrant workers. Observing and recording the lives of immigrants over many years, the artist has found their relationship to urban natives to be generally anxiety-ridden, despite a mutual effort to establish a modus vivendi. the biggest contradiction lies in the problem of the public and private. The difficulty of having public sanitary equipment such as toilets manifests the problem in everyday life. “Public toilets,” the artist states, “are the most typical special place in modern cities. they’re totally neutral. However, in this often ignored place, there are so many hidden powerful but uncertain signals. therefore, I want to put a typical house for rent as the ideal public toilet of the museum space. With the conceptual model of the private and the public, I am here attempting to stimulate concerns over this problem and cause confusions.” Resorting to moving images of private life that blend visually with the physical structure of the toilet, he intends to take the inquiry to a deeper level of discussion.