Tracing urban transformations: Ni Weihua’s playful intervention in China’s evolving sociospatial landscape

Abstract

This article delves into the multifaceted public art project entitled Tracing, orchestrated by Shanghai artist Ni Weihua, within the context of China’s sweeping socioeconomic transformation, as reflected in the geographical, spatial, and visual transformations of urban peripheries. Beginning in 2018 when Ni initiated it by meticulously tracing around the pictorial vestiges adorning dilapidated walls in Shanghai’s urban outskirts using black acrylic paint, Tracing has evolved into a collaborative endeavor spanning the globe. This article explores the origins and development of Tracing, situating it within Ni’s body of work, which responds to the ever-changing spatial and visual landscapes of China’s urbanization. Blurring the boundaries of graffiti, drawing, performance art, conceptual art, documentary photography, and media art, Tracing serves as both documentation and embodiment of the ongoing struggle between state-led spatial production and grassroots initiatives in the face of urban regeneration and urban-rural integration efforts. This article contends that Tracing, through its artistic, playful, and liberating approach to spatial intervention and image creation, empowers Ni and other participants to engage with marginalized spaces, amplify the voices of disadvantaged communities, and complicate prevailing narratives of urban development in China and beyond. In doing so, it contributes to a bottom-up mode of visual knowledge production about urbanism and expands the role of art as a medium for public participation, collective expression, and community building.