Pengkuei Ben Huang: TWOKINGSPost date：2024-05-23
Updates：2024-05-23
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- Event Time
- 2024-05-24~2024-06-30Tue.-Sun. 11:00-19:00
- Event Location
- B1, No. 120 Yanji Street, , Da'an Dist., Taipei City Taiwan, R.O.C
The Kings Regeneration Planning Initiative, known as “The Two Kings”, is an initiative launched by the City of Toronto in 1996 to reappropriate 400 acres of land on the southern portion of downtown. The area would envision a thriving mixed-use community from an abandoned industrial wasteland by reconfiguring an outdated and rigid zoning by-law.
Since then, Toronto’s southern downtown has experienced a dramatic transformation. Gone are empty factories and large car parks of yesteryear, with futuristic condominiums becoming new landmarks filling the skyline. The revitalized communities, although generating much needed urban vitality, have sparked a debate on the impact of gentrification. But the economic success of The Two Kings emboldened Toronto’s ambition to reshape neighborhoods beyond the downtown core. New towers emerged, replacing the old decadence while altering the characteristics of affected communities.
It is within such a context, photographer Pengkuei BEN HUANG began to focus on areas where The Two Kings initiatives were implemented. It offers a glimpse of the city in transformation, for which inhabitants are growing accustomed to reluctantly. These photographs, illustrating a clash or a fusion of the modern and the past, symbolized the city’s desire for a prosperous metropolis. Yet they could as well be regarded as a visual reflection on a complex relationship between urban regeneration and the current neoliberal climate that is impacting modern cities.
Since then, Toronto’s southern downtown has experienced a dramatic transformation. Gone are empty factories and large car parks of yesteryear, with futuristic condominiums becoming new landmarks filling the skyline. The revitalized communities, although generating much needed urban vitality, have sparked a debate on the impact of gentrification. But the economic success of The Two Kings emboldened Toronto’s ambition to reshape neighborhoods beyond the downtown core. New towers emerged, replacing the old decadence while altering the characteristics of affected communities.
It is within such a context, photographer Pengkuei BEN HUANG began to focus on areas where The Two Kings initiatives were implemented. It offers a glimpse of the city in transformation, for which inhabitants are growing accustomed to reluctantly. These photographs, illustrating a clash or a fusion of the modern and the past, symbolized the city’s desire for a prosperous metropolis. Yet they could as well be regarded as a visual reflection on a complex relationship between urban regeneration and the current neoliberal climate that is impacting modern cities.
