Temporary Shrine 2 By Shengjia Zhang
“Temporary Shrine 2” is a series of installations documented by photography, numbering around 80 in total. I was inspired by the small shrines commonly found on the streets of my hometown in the coastal region of southeast China. Street shrines are usually built from inexpensive materials and usually enshrine statues of deities. In front of it is placed offerings, normally inexpensive food. Incense is used as an offering and also as a way of communicating with the deities. It is a modest, grass-roots, non-opulent custom, but it reflects the piety of the people's faith. I have selected some architectural negative spaces in London, such as small fountains, electrical boxes, and building outfalls. I placed incense burners in front of these spaces to create a series of "shrines". It is an attempt to transform them into a potential shrine to Chinese folk beliefs. Meanwhile, the absence of deities placed in shrines is intended to make people rethink the object of worship and the nature of their faith. This may be the absence of Chinese deities in Britain, or perhaps my confusion about my own faith.