Park Associati presents The Grey Catalogue, a photographic exhibition of the works included in Barbara Rossi's project of the same name, supported by Strategia Fotografia 2024, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The project explores the tension between memory and progress, reflecting on the preservation of the historical identity of places. The scheduled talk will provide an opportunity for discussion with Barbara Rossi and Katya Knyazeva (Historian and Journalist), in dialogue with Michele Versaci (Strategy and Proposal Coordinator at Park Associati). The works will be on display at Park Hub from February 25 to March 1, 2025.
The Grey Catalogue is a photographic investigation documenting the emptied working-class neighborhoods—the Lilong—and their typical architecture, the Shikumen, sealed and suspended in time by a gray spiderweb-like barrier. An archive of streets, buildings, and views that, through a wide range of grey hues, invites reflection on the rapid urbanization of Shanghai, promoted by the government. This chromatic exploration, traversing shapes, materials, and sensations, helps us reflect on the meaning of grey as the color of contemporaneity.
From the original body of the project, seven photographs are displayed, accompanied by brief descriptions of the buildings captured, testifying to a past era, like parchment sheets speaking to a slowly fading history. Essential to this aspect was the collaboration with Katya Knyazeva and consultation of her book Shanghai Old Town. The Walled City, as well as academic articles and conversations with residents.
Barbara Rossi explains how cataloguing in the Lilong becomes not only a research exercise but an act of memory. With her photographic inventory, The Grey Catalogue presents a narrative in which past and future dissolve, and cataloguing becomes the last possible act of resistance.
What motivates the freezing of entire neighborhoods, enveloping them in a veil of smoke? The photographic research of The Grey Catalogue brings us closer to understanding a phenomenon whose methods and reasons remain somewhat unclear, offering a narrative in which cataloguing becomes the final act of preservation.
