Suspended City

The Suspended City series is a photographic work that documents places where large-scale residential and urban complexes were abandoned after development was halted. In this series, the artist photographs spaces that were designed with completion in mind but were never incorporated into the city, and removes the windows—the only exit connecting the interior and exterior—from the images. Through this, these places remain as isolated structures, unable to form relationships with the outside world any longer.

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Complexes where development has been halted are not so much failed projects as they are results revealing that the future presupposed by the logic of urban growth and real estate development at a specific time is no longer valid. These spaces remain frozen in a state just before human habitation, stuck in an intermediate stage that has neither entered the city nor become a complete ruin. In such places, windows function as minimal passageways connecting the inside and the outside, private and public spaces, and the present and the future.

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In this work, the artist intentionally severs the last remaining relationship the space had with the city by erasing the windows. A building devoid of windows no longer offers a view and loses the possibility of reaching the outside world. The interior remains a closed structure, unable to expand outward, while the exterior is also unable to perceive this space as part of the city. This visual intervention emphasizes the state following the withdrawal of the future promised by the logic of development.

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《Suspended City》 deals with the landscapes left behind when the premise of urban growth is suspended. Rather than documenting the failure of development, these photographs freeze the point where the flow moving toward completion came to a halt. Buildings with their windows removed exist in a state that is no longer inside or outside the city, and this work visually reveals that suspended time and the structure of the suspended city.