Journeys of Delta Objects
Journeys of Delta Objects explores how residents of the GBA have maintained cultural identities within an evolving global system and changing national context. Within the GBA, oyster sauce, dried tangerine peels, and other hometown specialties flavored everyday meals and dim sum brunches even after the Sino-British and Sino-Portuguese borders closed circa 1950. This website also maps how global manufacturing and logistics continue to reshape the geographies of everyday life. Since the establishment of the Shenzhen SEZ in 1980, for example, the GBA has become central to China’s rise as a manufacturing superpower. The region has modernized at an unprecedented rate, transforming rivers, rice paddies, lychee orchards and fishponds into a high-rise apartments and urban village tenements, industrial parks, highways, high-speed trains, and international ports. By focusing on object flows, Journeys offers new perspectives on the social causes and cultural effects of this transformation.
Journeys of Delta Objects explores how residents of the GBA have maintained cultural identities within an evolving global system and changing national context. Within the GBA, oyster sauce, dried tangerine peels, and other hometown specialties flavored everyday meals and dim sum brunches even after the Sino-British and Sino-Portuguese borders closed circa 1950. This website also maps how global manufacturing and logistics continue to reshape the geographies of everyday life. Since the establishment of the Shenzhen SEZ in 1980, for example, the GBA has become central to China’s rise as a manufacturing superpower. The region has modernized at an unprecedented rate, transforming rivers, rice paddies, lychee orchards and fishponds into a high-rise apartments and urban village tenements, industrial parks, highways, high-speed trains, and international ports. By focusing on object flows, Journeys offers new perspectives on the social causes and cultural effects of this transformation.
- 2025
- Grantee: Mary Ann O’Donnell
Artist-Ethnographer Mary Ann O’Donnell has documented urbanization and cultural change in Shenzhen for over thirty years. As a blogger at Shenzhen Noted (since 2005) and a co-founder of the Handshake 302 Art Space (since 2013), she presents anthropological research to scholars, students, and the general public in academic and experimental forms, in both the United States and China. She co-edited Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City and co-translated both Years of Sadness: The Autobiographical Writings of Wang Anyi and We Were SMART, a creative documentary by Li Yifan. She was executive curator of the Migrations: Home and Elsewhere exhibition at the Longhua (Dalang) Shenzhen Biennial sub-venue (2019), and co-curator of the At Ease in Xichong exhibition at the Dapeng (Xichong) Shenzhen Biennial sub-venue (2020) and Handshake 302 Satellite venue in Baishizhou (2013). She received her PhD in Anthropology from Rice University.