Birdhead 鸟头

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Photographers <a href="Song Tao">Song Tao</a> (b. 1979, Shanghai) and Ji Weiyu (b. 1980, Shanghai) created the collective identity Birdhead in 2004. Their work captures everyday life in their native city Shanghai, resulting in extensive photo series in black and white and color that deliver subjective and untouched images of urban reality today. The artists met as students at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School. They continue to live and work in Shanghai. <img src="/mediawiki/images/2/27/Birdhead_artists.jpg" _fck_mw_filename="Birdhead artists.jpg" _fck_mw_location="right" _fck_mw_type="frame" alt="Birdhead artists Ji Weiyu and Song Tao" class="fck_mw_frame fck_mw_right" />

Date & Place of Birth

<img src="/mediawiki/images/c/c6/Birdhead_birdhead_2005_25_2005.jpg" _fck_mw_filename="Birdhead birdhead 2005 25 2005.jpg" _fck_mw_location="left" _fck_mw_type="frame" alt="Birdhead, "Birdhead 2005-25", 2005" class="fck_mw_frame fck_mw_left" /><a href="Song Tao">Song Tao</a> was born in Shanghai in 1979.

Ji Weiyu was born in Shanghai in 1980.

Education & Development

Song and Ji met as students at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School. They both graduated in 2000.

Art

Birdhead’s oeuvre consists of series of photographs, called albums, that present frank, everyday images of urban life in Shanghai. According to the artists, “We use cameras to express our feelings. They are tools that we use to tell stories and express our feelings.”http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/texts/id/1077 The artists, who grew up in Shanghai in the 1980s when mass urbanization began in China, address the frantic pace of development and change in the city. Their photographs contain a spontaneous and accumulative aesthetic, with an almost snapshot-like quality, that records their everyday lives in Shanghai.

Emergence & Reception

<img src="/mediawiki/images/8/88/Birdhead_2004_19.jpg" _fck_mw_filename="Birdhead 2004 19.jpg" _fck_mw_location="left" _fck_mw_type="frame" alt="Birdhead, "Birdhead 2004-19", 2004" class="fck_mw_frame fck_mw_left" />Song Tao and Ji Weiyu began to collaborate in 2004 while Ji was studying in London and Song was in Shanghai. The aspiring photographers took photographs of their daily lives and shared them with each other over the internet. When Ji returned to Shanghai, he visited Song and for two weeks they spent time taking photos throughout Shanghai. After two more weeks developing and editing the photos, Song and Ji created their first album, “The Beginning of Summer” (2004). All of the photographs were about the two photographers and their surrounding in Shanghai.

According to the artists, the name Birdhead came about as spontaneously as their first album. When they were building a document of images on their desktop computer, they randomly typed on the keyboard to name the folder. The random typing spelled out the two Chinese characters “Bird” and “Head”. They took the characters as their collaborative name.http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/texts/id/1077

Secondary Activities

Birdhead is currently working on a new art project called Birdhead Affordable Game (BAG). Birdhead created BAG as a response to the current economic crisis, and its effect on the art market. BAG is a collaboration between Birdhead and different artists, offering images of the artists' representative works printed on ordinary paper with sprayed-on frames. For more information on the game, including rules, <a href="http://gendaigallery.org/exhibits/BAGart/index.html">Click Here</a> or visit the website <a href="http://www.bagart.org/">http://www.bagart.org/</a>. <img src="/mediawiki/images/b/bd/Birdhead_artists_two_2004.jpg" _fck_mw_filename="Birdhead artists two 2004.jpg" _fck_mw_location="right" _fck_mw_type="frame" alt="Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, 2004" class="fck_mw_frame fck_mw_right" />

Exhibitions

Birdhead’s photographs were first exhibited in 2005. In their short career, their works have been shown in both group and solo exhibitions in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, China and Oslo, Norway.

For Birdhead’s CV, <a href="http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/birdhead/bio">Click Here</a>