The focus on Beijing’s speed of development and the concomitant fascination with the unchecked destruction of hutongs reveal only part of Beijing’s urban story. If we consider that migrant workers (农民工) are the ‘human infrastructure’ that enables the built infrastructure, then grappling with how contemporary artists depict, exploit, and represent this human infrastructure uncovers many previously overlooked stakeholders. Artists reflect, recombine, and reimagine the figure of the migrant worker. However, such artistic interventions, while a critical avenue for addressing the contested citizenship of urban dwellers, are only one facet of the complex visual field of Beijing. Therefore, in addition to these artists’ works, I discuss other visual elements of Beijing such as the scrawled phone numbers advertising a variety of services for migrant workers on the surfaces of Beijing’s built environment. This unsigned public calligraphic practice is considered alongside the art of globally recognized artists to probe the interconnectedness of urban visual practices, question the targeted constituencies, and examine their reception by a range of urban audiences, revealing the communicative potential of images and text in the urban context and questioning what is at stake for the networks of migrant workers in Beijing that are often invisible. © 2015, © The Author(s) 2015.

Beijing Migrant workers public calligraphy human infrastructure contemporary art urban dwellers

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