Says Deng: The series on going in regard of the largest group of Chinese immigrants in Paris, France– the wenzhounese. By chance, I got in touch with the wenzhounese community and started photographing their weddings since 2015. A decent wedding comes first; and behind the elaborate wedding etiquette, it is also a pursuit of their own identity. In this process, I observed that the cultural attribute of the east and the acquired culture of the west produced an unexpected identity transformation at this special moment. For them, the French identity and the fact of them living in Paris don’t equal an integration into the French culture. On the contrary, they hold more expectation to get the recognition of the inner culture, however, China has been a distant concept of home to them. It became a kind of escape in an either way.
Deng Jiayun was born in 1987 in Tongren, Guizhou Province, China. She graduated from Nanjing University of Communication, China, in 2010. In 2015, she entered the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles, France. She graduated with honors in 2018 for her current photography series À contre courant , with the Alexandra Carle award. His works are exhibited in Parisian galleries, such as the Galerie du Crous and Raiboudi Wang Gallery. Deng JiaYun’s concerns focus mainly on the aspects of the “ The Society of the Spectacle ”, in its real and dramatic dimension. Through questioning between the objective and the subjective, photography can become ambivalent: it produces an imaginary space without limits. Deng Jia Yun’s work is anchored in the construction of the society of contemporary China, based on his own experience and transcripts. In a dialogue between reality and artifice, photographs seek to create a narrative passing through intervals between reality and imagination.
