From September 20 to December 13, 2009 the Hyde Park Art Center presents Shanghype!, an exhibition featuring the video work of sixteen international artists who explore aspects of Shanghai’s rapidly evolving urban culture. Held in the Art Center’s Black Box Gallery, Shanghype! dismantles perceptions of the city’s identity, stimulating complicated visions of the Far Orient and asking the public to reevaluate notions of neoliberalism and globalization.

Focusing on a city that is constantly in flux—having been built from scratch, rebuilt, and overbuilt—the exhibition reveals a generation’s dramatic achievements while questioning the sustainability of existing urbanism. Using the notion of China at its height as a beginning metaphor, the exhibition works to explore Shanghai’s aspirations and desire to regain its once legendary reputation, the reflected need of China to be recognized as international and modern, and the power struggle between Shanghai’s local and global identity. Organizers of Shanghype! worked closely with selected artists on specific projects “pushing the place of Shanghai in the imaginary”.