LiJiang: The Mutual Gaze of Tourism (2023)
Culture is never untouched—
the moment it is gazed upon, it is changed.
In Lijiang, my hometown, tourists arrive seeking the “authentic,” yet their gaze reshapes what they find:
linen becomes polyester, silver becomes sequins,
heritage becomes performance.
But distortion is also inheritance.
From pixelated cross-stitches to dazzling plastic flowers,
I reimagine NaXi patterns with cheap bright fabrics, turning the fast language of tourism into a textile archive of today.
This project is not nostalgia for the past,
but a dialogue between gaze and memory,
between what is lost and what is reinvented.
Because even in performance, there is truth;
even in spectacle, there is beauty.
Final Photoshoot Credits:
Fashion Designer: Effe Qi HE @effewaldorf
Photographer: Tiger ZiRan ZHOU @tiger.z_ @tigerzrzhou
Assistant: Zixin Wang @zixin_wang__ , Shi Chaoyang
Make up: Zhou
Model: Kexin Zhang
Copyright Notice:
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Copyright Notice: *
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