Love Hotel
Partners Meng Jin and Fang Er’s first collaborative photography project, Love Hotel explores the two artists’ ongoing interest in urban life, architecture, memory and found objects, and the inter-relationship between physical buildings, objects and their social context. The couple worked on-site within the framework of 3-hour ’rest’ periods in various ’short-stay’ hotels creating improvised, spontaneous sculpture works with the existing objects found in the rented love hotel rooms. Slightly amorphous structures, the rearranged inanimate objects hint at entangled anthropomorphic creations in this fantasy space devoid of actual human presence.
Artist statement by Robert van der Hilst:
When I started working on my "Chinese interiors" photography project in June 2004, about a year after having finished my "Cuban Interiors" project, I believed that I could take the same approach in China as in Cuba.....photographing people inside their homes, meeting them, getting to know them, positioning them as, I, the photographer, saw them, inside their homes. And most importantly, speak with these people in their language and blend into their lives for a short period of time. It did not turn out like that at all in China. I do not speak the language and to a large extent I am ignorant of their culture. Soon after embarking on the project I realized that I would not be able to blend into these people’s lives as easily. Their reactions upon seeing a very tall man and his camera equipment at their doorstep made me realize that this was not going to work. I felt like an alien arriving at these people’s doorstep.