« Ba ling hou » (born after 80): this idiom refers to the first generation born under the one-child policy and during the reform and opening up led by Deng Xiaoping after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). These are young people who grew up in a world which they were the center of, with Internet and social media, in a consumer society in total rupture with the preceding generations.
Luo Yang belongs to this generation. Her portraits depict an emerging Chinese youth culture that defies imposed expectations and stereotypes. Her work is a testa-ment to her subjects’ individuality and personality. Femininity, gender, identity: she reflects the deep changes taking place in China today.
In 2007, at the age of 23, she started the series Girls, which brought Luo Yang inter-national recognition. Over the course of ten years, Luo Yang followed a hundred women, recording changes to their bodies and their lives over the course of several years. This meant observing and capturing their delicate transition from adolescence to adulthood. It is as if the photographer held a mirror to her own growth and evolu-tion alongside that of her models, to capture their (her) emotions as young woman.
Luo Yang is now 35 years old, and she is captivated by both boys and girls, post-teenagers and young adults. Since 2019, in her new series Youth, she shifts her fo-cus to younger generations, and explores through them the changes of a Chinese society now globalized and whose mutation has reached a new scale. Born in the 1990s and early 2000s, her models belong to the urban cool, they are seemingly well anchored in the times yet sit in opposition to mainstream currents vibrating through young Chinese society today.
Doors 门艺
Doors 门艺 is an agency specializing in cultural production and promotion founded in 2017 by Bérénice Angremy and Victoria Jonathan, two French women living be-tween Paris and Beijing who are passionate about China and its transformations. In a range of fields (contemporary art, photography, fashion and music), the goal of the agency is to open doors and facilitate cultural exchange between China and Europe, through creative and innovative events & projects.
A2Z Art Gallery
Located in the heart of historical Saint-Germain-des-Prés, A2Z Gallery was created in 2009. Specalized in contemporary art, the gallery presents a selection of international artists. The founders, Ziwei and Anthony Phuong, of Chinese origin, have created a platform in which artists have carte blanche to express their universe.