Bo Wang
‘The Revolution will not be air conditioned’
While the Gil Scott-Heron lyric poem on which this work’s title plays (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) was a call to action for Black America in the 1970s, the Chinese artist’s video — a still from which is seen here — “begins with images of the 2019 anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong—scenes of rioting and destruction that spilled into the city’s luxury shopping malls,” the exhibition notes state. “Here, the artist explores the apparent contradiction between the raw aesthetics of protest and the sterile, perfectly manicured backdrop of the mall. Rather than seeing the site as superficial, he treats the shopping mall and its air-conditioning system as a serious political site.”
The video goes on to link the mall’s origins to the 19th-century colonial botanical trade, looking at terrariums and Wardian cases, which were used “to create artificial tropical micro-climates in European capitals.” The notes continue: “Through a collage of found footage, archival films, advertisements, videogames and salesforce training videos, Wang investigates how the air-conditioned mall has become a controlled environment for commerce and social discipline.”
Lawrence Lek
‘Black Cloud’
The London-based Chinese artist is, according to his website, “best known for advancing the concept of Sinofuturism with immersive installations that explore spiritual and existential themes through the lens of science fiction.” This short film, set in an unspecified near future, “follows a lone surveillance AI navigating an existential crisis while watching over the empty streets of SimBeijing — a replica of the Chinese capital originally built by a fictional tech conglomerate to road test self-driving vehicles,” the show notes explain.
Lek uses his speculative fiction to explore the concept of smart cities. In his film, SimBeijing, devoid of a living population, no longer has a discernible purpose, and nothing for the AI to monitor. But it is still compelled by its programming to perform its now meaningless task. Eventually, it confides in a self-help program, and reveals why the city is now empty.
Do Ho Suh
‘Rubbing / Loving’
The South Korean artist created this piece in his former Singapore studio, by rubbing paper against everyday objects including light switches, travel adapters, and power sockets — things that “mark the threshold between private and public space, and between transit and belonging,” the notes state. “What emerges is a physical and emotionally charged imprint of surfaces touched daily without ever truly being seen.”
Dima Srouji
‘The Rule of Superposition 2’
“In her artistic practice, Dima Srouji examines archaeology as a space of power, questioning who gets to claim history in contested lands like her native Palestine,” the notes explain. This floor piece centers on Jerusalem, combining “centuries of maps and excavations of the city’s soil and streets alongside speculative future archaeology.” In doing so, Srouji “examines a contested past marked by Western Biblical archaeology and narratives aimed at legitimizing the state of Israel by claiming ownership of Jerusalem’s distant past. Srouji contrasts these ideological projects with the reality of a dense, lived-in urban center, where the drive to unearth mythical histories has often led to the displacement of Palestinians.”
Bani Abidi
‘Security Barriers A-L’
This portfolio consists of 12 digital prints of different types of security barriers that can be found in Abidi’s hometown of Karachi, in front of embassies, airports, and intersections, for example. Such barriers began to appear on the city’s streets shortly after 9/11. However, “Security Barriers” should not be interpreted as purely “about” Karachi. Abidi has said in the past that her work is not just about Pakistan. Indeed, she told Ocula in 2019, “We ought to be aware … that such an identity-based reading of culture only happens when work by a brown person is shown in a white space.” She continued: “It’s about power, security, and militarized architecture. And it’s about the vulnerability of regular people.”
