Shanzhai Lyric
Visual Arts Residency

Shanzhai Lyric (est. 2015) is a roving poetic research unit exploring radical logistics and linguistics through technological aberration and nonofficial cultures. Drawing inspiration from the experimental English of “shanzhai” (counterfeit) T-shirts made in China, they examine how mimicry, hybridity, and permutation reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Incomplete Poem, their archive of poetry garments, circulates through poetry-lectures, publications, and installations. In 2020, they founded the fictional office of Canal Street Research Association to probe ideas of ownership and property through bootleg-as-method. Their work has been presented at Abrons Arts Center, Amant, Artists Space, MoMA PS1, Sculpture Center, and Storefront for Art & Architecture, all in New York; Stuart Hall Library, London; Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; and others. Their writing has appeared in The New Inquiry and ArtReview Asia.