Stone Bollards

Stone Bollards was photographed on the streets of Shenzhen, a city widely associated with speed, efficiency, and an intense working rhythm. While passing through an intersection, I noticed that the stone bollards lining the road were covered with scratches, impact marks, and chipped surfaces. Most of these traces had been left by electric bicycles moving through the narrow gaps between them, recording repeated encounters between vehicles, bodies, and limited urban space.

Originally installed to divide the road, restrict traffic, and maintain public order, the bollards gradually became an unintended form of urban record. Each mark suggests a passage made at close range, a hurried turn, or a moment of friction within a crowded route. Although the people in motion remain absent from the photographs, their speed and pressure are indirectly preserved on the damaged surfaces.

I approach these objects as small cross-sections of the city. They reflect Shenzhen’s dense patterns of circulation and the everyday rhythm produced by work, commuting, and economic pressure. People continually search for faster routes, negotiating, passing, and colliding within restricted spaces, while opportunities to pause become increasingly limited.

Through these silent pieces of public infrastructure, the work examines how urban efficiency acts upon the body and becomes translated into visible material traces. The damage on the bollards belongs to the road, while also functioning as a metaphor for the speed, compression, and fatigue experienced by those who move through the city.