“If the­re is to be a revo­lu­tion the­re must be a par­ty”. This is how one of the most ico­nic and poli­ti­cal­ly enga­ged book of the cen­tu­ry would start if we applied an inten­tio­nal fil­ter. The fil­ter would hide the parts of the slo­gans and sen­ten­ces that got even­tual­ly obso­le­te in the last deca­des and the book is the Lit­tle red one: “Quo­ta­tions from Chair­man Mao Tse-tung”, the second most prin­ted book in Histo­ry (alter the Bible) but a book that can only be found nowa­days in Chi­na at some tou­ri­st shops.

In an attempt to build a docu­men­ta­ry object that to pushes the limi­ts of docu­men­ting with ima­ges, the series “Par­ty” pre­sen­ts a deli­be­ra­te­ly per­so­nal approach to the con­tem­po­ra­ry Chi­ne­se socie­ty and adds layers of signi­fi­can­ce by choo­sing a loa­ded plat­form. Using cen­sor­ship to era­se the parts of the text that are no lon­ger in use in the country’s rou­ti­ne, the resul­ting pages beco­me a script whe­re the mat­ching ima­ges build a series of dip­ty­chs that dyna­mi­cal rai­se the que­stion of the real natu­re of Com­mu­ni­sm in Chi­na the­se days. The com­bi­na­tion of this mani­pu­la­ted text and the ima­ges pairs pie­ces of infor­ma­tion that aim to por­tray Chi­na in a more com­pre­hen­si­ve way, appea­ling our own cli­chés towards the coun­try and their bipo­lar poli­ti­cal struc­tu­re.

The series repro­du­ce the mat­ching pages of the book “Par­ty” publi­shed by RM and the Archi­ve of Modern Con­flict and com­bi­ne seri­gra­phs of the cen­so­red tex­ts with ima­ges cap­tu­red by the arti­st Cri­sti­na De Mid­del during her trips to Chi­na. Again the arti­st explo­res the boun­da­ries and limi­ts in the use of the pho­to­gra­phic ima­ge to build tru­th­ful gra­phic testi­mo­nies and to rai­se the deba­te about the con­struc­tion of the opi­nion and Histo­ry and the role that pho­to­gra­phy has been play­ing so far.