ACIAC Artist Workshop - “Peasantography": Photographing Left Behind Children

In China, 63 million children grew up with their grandparents or great grandparents in the countryside while their parents working in the cities, sometimes thousands of miles away. Photographer Tami Xiang’s “Peasantography: Family Portrait” addresses the unique voice of contemporary socially engaged Chinese art through a specific case study on these "Left Behind Children" (LBC). To develop this series, Xiang photographed and interviewed hundreds of children and their family. The ethno-photographic project provides some background information and describes the negative effects on the Left Behind Children of policies and political circumstances that have led to this situation. In this workshop, Tami Xiang will discuss the influence of household registration system, financial burden and the lack of care on the children, and how art offers them a voice that has hardly been heard in the particular sociopolitical context in contemporary China. The photography series will be exhibited at the Festival Hub – Paddington Town Hall during Head On Photo Festival, between 4 and 19 May 2019. Tami Xiang is a Perth based Chinese-Australian artist and academic scholar. She has achieved the Masters of Fine Arts from University of Western Australia (UWA) and she is currently undertaking a PhD by research at UWA. Tami’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Mainland China, France, Taiwan and the U.S. Her work has been published on the New York Times and the Eye of Photography in France and Artlink in Australia.