In Gutai, Wenhua Shi returns to the locations of his childhood in Wuhan and, with the encyclopaedic intensity of a collector, catalogues their textural qualities, the way they look at certain times of day, on 16mm film using in-camera edits; named after the Japanese Gutai movement (in Chinese ‘gu tai’ translates to ‘body tool’), Shi’s collected images speak to the bodily and immediate, a way of navigating, knowing and remembering place.
