Garden of Mirrored Flowers – Hu Fang

Fang’s novel tells the story of a man in the process of designing a theme park, called ‘Garden of Mirrored Flowers’, and is an adaptation and transformation of the classical Chinese novel Jin Hua Yuan, or Flowers in the Mirror, from the Qing Dynasty. Beginning as a pictorial journey through myriad advertisements and the way they allow for many different entries into reality, Fang depicts parallels between the park’s actual construction and how it has been imagined, or how it has evolved out of history. For ‘Garden of Mirrored Flowers’ is less the vision of one author (Fang) and more the result of reality writing itself through this author; that is, a script, or documentary, of life. “It’s a book,” Fang states, “written by a ghost writer. Me? Just a traveler floating within the wave of globalization.” Culminating with the park’s opening ceremony, Fang creates a space where history seems to have been completely consumed and absorbed by contemporary social movements. It is both a labyrinth to get lost in and a pavilion made of reflective glass.

Hu Fang is a novelist, art critic, and the co-founder and artistic director of Vitamin Creative Space, a project and gallery space dedicated to contemporary art exploration and searching for an independent working mode, specifically geared to the contemporary Chinese context. He lives and works in Beijing and Guangzhou.