Exhibition Online: Imagined Lives Exhibition: Responses to the HKBU Library Chinese Propaganda Posters Collection

About the Exhibition

The 2015-2016 class of Anthropology of Art (AVA) used the HKBU Library Chinese Propaganda Poster collection as primary source materials. The students each chose a poster from the collection that appealed directly to them on an immediate, superficial level. They then embarked on an in-depth study of their chosen poster as both a visual reality and a lived reality that impacted on the lives of the people around it.

Their research had them following the development of the medium from the birth of mass advertising on the streets of fin de siècle Paris to a powerful tool for mobilising nations in times of great turmoil. After detailed contextual analysis of their posters, they then set about the more speculative Imagined Lives Projects. This project brought the focus back to the individual, with the students imagining a protagonist caught up in the great events./span>

This exhibition presents a selection of these projects alongside a larger selection from the library collection.