Making a Scene: Inside China's Skate Culture

The major group exhibition Skate of the Art: Skateboarding Across Cultures at Fotografiska features 21 global artists exploring the international skate landscape. It highlights how photography goes beyond documenting skate scenes to actively construct their cultural imagination—forging transgenerational icons, myths, and collective identities. From August 15 to September 6, 2026, Fotografiska Shanghai and Nike SB jointly present two special projects: Making a Scene: Inside China's Skate Culture and Hailun Ma’s solo exhibition Almaty Skate Girls , showcasing photography’s role in cultivating local skate culture and its emerging expressions in Central Asian cities.

From August 15 to September 6, the special project Making a Scene: Inside China's Skate Culture will present the distinct creative practices of five photographers—James Andanson, wangchenweiii, Owen Yu, NankingJoe, and Rawyee Hwang—illustrating how photography actively constructs, enriches, and extends local skateboarding culture.

Skateboarding is more than a sport—it is an interconnected culture of visual arts, music, fashion, and lifestyle that continuously breeds diverse creativity. It concerns not only the execution of a trick, but also the establishment of a uniquely street-oriented way of seeing. While skaters reimagine and reinterpret the possibilities of their environment, photographers translate these spontaneous street moments into images. Where these two creative forces collide on site, skate photography becomes, from its very inception, something much deeper than mere documentation.

Where the main exhibition Skate of the Art situates skateboarding within a expansive visual and cultural context, the China Section—Making a Scene: Inside China's Skate Culture—focuses squarely on the creative practices of five individual photographers.

From the earliest known skate archival footage in Mainland of China to the ongoing exploration of diverse urban landscapes and terrains; from the regional bonds and friendships forged through countless tours to the intergenerational legacy passed down among photographers—these varied lived experiences and ways of seeing weave together a visual trajectory spanning nearly fifty years of Chinese skate culture.