NEVEN presents an offsite performance of Hongxi Li’s Sandcastle, 2024, at The Stage development in Shoreditch, in conjunction with Li’s forthcoming solo Heaven Green which opens at NEVEN’s gallery space on 26 September.

Sandcastle is a 30-minute performance exploring land possession and urbanisation through Jolene, Li’s fictional persona. A child-sized, handcrafted garden gate leads into a pit filled with one ton of soil, partially recycled from a construction site, in which Jolene takes up position, holding a metal bucket. Dressed in generic corporate attire and a formal hairstyle, Jolene materialises as the fungible agent of various systems of authority across Li’s live works, from schoolmistress to receptionist to surveillant in turn. The performance starts with a whistle-blow from an onlooking supervisor. The bucket reveals itself to be the mould of a brutalist housing block, an architectural style evocative of the residential towers built en-masse across China during its early 2000s real estate boom. As Jolene moulds the soil into a miniature cityscape, her simple, repetitive actions at once recall those of a child building sandcastles at the beach while also invoking the industrially mechanised processes of mass urban development in China, which are characterised by replication and standardisation. As time ticks, bringing the supervisor gradually closer to the pit, Jolene races against the clock to populate the pit with as many structures as possible, the pressure causing some of the dirt buildings to collapse or crumble in her wake. 

Taking place at The Stage Shoreditch, a mixed residential and commercial development still under construction, the performance reckons with the legacy of mass urbanisation in Li’s native China over the past few decades, which represents one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in human history. Since the late 1970s, China’s urban population has grown from around 18% to over 60% today, with hundreds of millions moving from rural areas to cities in search of better opportunities. To accommodate this influx, China embarked on a rapid construction spree, building entire cities at an unprecedented pace. However, the speed and scale of the project catalysed significant compromises, such as infrastructure quality, environmental degradation, and increased vulnerability to natural disasters, as exemplified by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake disaster, which resulted in over 87,000 deaths, largely due to the collapse of poorly constructed buildings, including schools, hospitals, and residential complexes. The “tofu-dreg projects,” as they were called, became a symbol of the vulnerabilities in China’s rapid urbanisation model, where speed and cost-cutting often took precedence over safety and durability.

In Sandcastle, Jolene plays God – or real estate developer – as she rapidly builds up a new skyline from the ground up, imaging the privatisation of land and the swift transformation of natural landscapes into urban environments in real-time. Her fragile and precarious buildings call to mind the tofu-dreg projects and speak to the double-edged sword of China’s rapidly changed landscape, which fueled economic growth and modernisation while also exposing vulnerabilities in infrastructure, sustainability, and ethics. Sandcastle convolutes the human impulse to expand, highlighting the complexities implicit in received notions of “progress” in contemporary society. As the final whistle blow is heard, Jolene exits, her once pristine uniform now smeared with dirt, leaving her new little city to its fate. Hongxi Li, Sandcastle, 2024 Duration 30 minutes Performed by Hongxi Li and Sangyoon Chung Movement consultancy by Sarah Daukes Lighting by Joe Hunt With thanks to The Stage Shoreditch and Galliard Homes Limited