Elmira Abolhassani 

In the last 10 years of my life, I had started a pass to identify my identity confronting other cultures, nationalities, societies, and ideologies. I have travelled to various countries in western Asia, while explored most of the European countries. I was required to admit diversity and diversified living styles and languages while I had to defend my country's cultural, religious and linguistic identity but also have criticized with globalization and modernization. During the last century, lots of things changed in many countries like Iran. the face that we have from cities are totally different from what we can find in pictures of just 40 years ago. The face of my country changed extremely fast and modernization emerged into our identities in a new way. I remember from my childhood, new constructions full of scaffolds as well as traditional peoples from our neighborhoods. I believe this paradoxical situation continued with a deeper gap.China has experienced a shifting cultural journey in the last 200 years as well. So, my main reason to be in China, was observing the capital and what is going on there and how peoples adapted themselves with the new environment like living in apartments.
Nowadays, we cannot see new Chinese traditional architecture around Beijing but thousands of modern towers and sky- scrubbers. As an Iranian, I am struggling as well with cities architectural transformation and looking for society’s responses to these shifts. This is obvious that each society has its own affections and reactions regarding cultural and environmental transformations. To have a better understanding of what's going underlying Beijing living cultural atmosphere, and recognize the explained city transformations and its affections, I participated in Redgate Art Residency program during April 2019 and worked and live for a month in Jingwangjiayuan neighbourhoods in suburban of Beijing. The result of this research was an group exhibition in Red Gate gallery in 798 district and a phtography collection of what I found out of people's apartments.