Open Sesame #4
184 x 260mm, 134 pages
Beijing, China
Annual
First issue published in 2018
Concept: Sasha Fominskaya & Céline Lamée
Editorial: Heather Mowbray & Aaron Fox-Lerner
Graphic design: Lava Beijing
Dedicated to Chinese online shopping platform TaoBao—the world’s largest online e-commerce site—Open Sesame 芝麻开门 highlights our reliance on home delivery. This reliance was further emphasised during China’s prolonged Covid lockdowns, so this fourth issue, themed ‘Staying Alive’ looks at how TaoBao helps people survive life and death.
If that sounds a serious proposition, think again. From its flamboyant page design to its humorous take on its theme, Open Sesame has plenty of fun to offer as it deconstructs TaoBao and teases out the absurdities of online life.
Discover how to shop for your ancestors while adhering to the rules of the Chinese afterlife, and the shift away from the colour red, historically symbolic of wealth and prosperity, to green as a consequence from the pandemic’s traffic light system of entry requirements (and also possibly the reason behind the choice of an impressively rich flouro green throughout the issue).