Cao Zhen

THE Seventh Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale will take place from May 12 to Aug. 31 at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT). Like previous years, OCAT is inviting about 10 international artists to stay in Shenzhen for five to six weeks to create artworks for the biennale.

Two weeks after arriving in Shenzhen, British artist Laura Oldfield Ford has finished dozens of drawings depicting the urban of Dongmen shopping areas and Shekou.

Ford typically begins work by walking through the city, photographing interesting scenes and drawing them using a ballpen. Though photorealist in style, some of her works for the biennale feature skyscrapers in central Futian commercial areas, Western fast-food outlets in Dongmen, Chinese models on billboards and fashion magazines, property advertisements and expats in Shekou.

“I want to show the consumer-driven economy which is a product of the city’s rapid development,” said Ford last week in her studio in OCAT. “The property speculation here has struck me and I wonder how long the property-integrated economy will last.”

Ford said that before the biennale begins in mid-May, she would explore the areas of the city that are heavily populated by migrant workers.

Born in 1973, Ford grew up in Halifax, England. After she took her master’s degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in 2007, she resided in London and self-published Savage Messiah, a quarterly magazine showing her drawings and writings. In form and content, Ford echoes 1970s and 80s punk style in her work.

Ford walks around cities and subjectively maps them in their intensive state of movement and flux. Through these drifts and the documentation of them she is seeking the point of transition from aesthetic practice to a radical critique of the city.

Her works make visible a strong desire to coax out the hidden histories and lost voices buried deep in the fabric of the architecture and channel them through the drawings where they can be reactivated.

Ford is well-known for her poetic and political engagement with London as a site of social antagonism. Her latest project consists of more than 100 ink drawings chronicling the impact of regeneration of London titled “2013, Drifting Through the Ruins.”

Ford’s works done in Shenzhen will be on display at the biennale.