End of Slide

2022-2024

End of Slide marks both a physical and sensory threshold. It is the moment when motion ends and stillness begins. As China’s infrastructure rapidly expanded, playground slides appeared in large numbers across newly built neighborhoods. Many of these areas, however, were never fully inhabited. Without children, the slides stand unused or abandoned. 

In my childhood, slides were rare. Now they appear everywhere, increasingly colorful and varied in form, yet they attract fewer children than before. Their playful shapes feel strangely hollow. In these structures, I see not only the afterimage of a particular moment in China’s infrastructure boom, but also the quiet end of my own childhood. ​