The Totem Recollection series is one of Tian Taiquan’s most iconic collections of images. Here a woman is seemingly sleeping amongst vintage newspaper clippings. She is consumed by the news, the politics that have saturated Chinese life for so long. Is she able to rise up and carry on or is this burden too much for society to bare. Totem Recollection confronts the notion of collect... More

The Totem Recollection series is one of Tian Taiquan’s most iconic collections of images. Here a woman is seemingly sleeping amongst vintage newspaper clippings. She is consumed by the news, the politics that have saturated Chinese life for so long. Is she able to rise up and carry on or is this burden too much for society to bare. Totem Recollection confronts the notion of collective memory in relation to China’s recent political past and questions the manner by which history dictates this story. To make this work Tian combines hundreds of photographs together to make one powerful image.