Teardown District - island6

Shanghai is a different world. It’s a different version of China within China, where time passes somewhat faster and our footprints dry up in a flash. Far from the Great Wall and the terracotta army, hanging temples and mountain sized Buddha sculptures, Shanghai is an ever-changing showroom of recycled European styles and American tastes. Art Deco hotels and classicistic apartments harmonize with the shikumen residences and the network of longtang houses. It’s hard to trace back when “Chinese” styles started to mix with the “Western” ones, as what you can see here is something special Shanghainese. And you don’t even really care. Until the character “拆” (chai) appears on a house in your favorite neighborhood. You shrug. You go home and come back in a few years to find a completely different city. Skyscrapers were built where you used to buy your favorite baozi. You sigh. But hey! Shanghai is not all walls and bricks, not a stage, but some permanent revolutionary metamorphosis.

Liu Dao 六岛(pinyin: Liùdǎo) is a Shanghai-based art collective of tech-geeks and creative talents driven by innovation and interaction. The collective produces cutting-edge art that constantly contemplates the future of Asia, engages sights and scenes from old and new China, and elevates the skills of new talents by working from a communal forum. Liu Dao's art is visual, interactive, conceptual, humorous, and somber - but always striking, always involving fresh takes on modern technology, and always the product of collaboration. Since Liu Dao's beginning, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, new media artists, software and digital imaging artists, dancers, writers, engineers, and curators have worked together to produce original, intriguing shows. The collective has ranged from 6 to 26 people since its inception in 2006. island6 often features guest directors, performers, and curators for individual artworks or special exhibitions, allowing an international and cross-cultural foundation for original ideas to be born from many sources of input rather than one. The island6 art collective (Liu Dao 六岛) has appeared in acclaimed art fairs around the world, including Art Paris, KIAF Seoul, the Hong Kong Art Fair, SHContemporary, Scope New York, Miami & Basel, Art Stage Singapore, Art Dubai, Contemporary Istanbul, KIAF Seoul, and many more…