Film & Video (Film & Video)

The installation Infinity and Infinity Plus One by Cao Shu is a modern fable of destruction, collective consciousness, and future memory told through the lens of a seaside hotel erected in the 1990s on an island in China. Combining 3D-rendered images and shot footage, the work travels through a seemingly-unlimited number of rooms, infinite corridors, and breathtaking viewpoints on site. Meanwhile, an official voiceover tells an absurd story about philosophy and mathematics in the form of a monologue.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

font VII by Catalina Ouyang is part of an ongoing series of ‘fonts’, or sculptures, inspired by Catholic holy water vessels. This particular iteration from the series combines hand-carved soapstone, a stop loss trap, horse hair, fermented egg, and other elements to create an artwork that defies categorization. The work’s most notable feature is a small cavity that cradles a naked egg—a translucent, flaccid egg without its outer shell.

Advanced Technology (Advanced Technology)

The Great Adventure of the Material World Knight by Lu Yang is a video game world in which an androgynous protagonist goes on a hero’s journey to overcome their understanding of the material world as a coherent, objective truth. Looping arcade music builds suspense as the artist mobilizes varying aesthetics—Sinofuturist cityscapes, Kawaii, religious imagery, anime characters, and body scans of the artist—to propel the viewer through a series of levels, including heaven, hell, and various sites populated by deities and monsters. While traversing these worlds, the protagonist encounters a dizzying array of characters while posing a series of questions about the subjective nature of reality, desire, and suffering.

Installation (Installation)

Referencing psychology, philosophy, and spiritualism, A series of personal questions addressed to a Hikimawashi kappa traveling coat by James Webb is an ongoing series in which the artist poses spoken questions to objects via a speaker installed near the object on display. The questions are addressed to the objects as if they were sentient beings able to respond. Each question is left hanging, unanswered for approximately 10 seconds before the next question is posed.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Ana Vaz describes her film É Noite na América (It is Night in America) as an eco-terror tale, freely inspired by A cosmopolitics of animals by Brazilian philosopher Juliana Fausto; in which she investigates the political life of non-human beings and questions the modern idea of the exceptionality of the human species. In parallel to the feature film version, Vaz created a three-channel installation format meant to be displayed in contemporary art spaces. This edition includes three complementary video works that expand on the conceptual frameworks of the film.

Textile (Textile)

A Year · Marx by Liu Ding consists of a piece of silk onto which a poem about Marx is printed using inkjet. The work is part of the silk inkjet series A Year, which features political poems from Pine Trees on the Square , a series that Liu Ding wrote for the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. The year 2015 marked a critical political juncture for China, orchestrated by its current leadership and centered around propositions for nationalism.

Installation (Installation)

In the hologram “Mano con hojas” (”Hand with Leaves”, 2013), nature is portrayed simultaneously as an interconnected system of processes and the essence of the universe. A change in the understanding of nature challenges the understanding of our own natures. The visual metaphor of the human hand enmeshed and inextricably entangled with leaves suggests that humans cannot be divorced from nature, and moreover that they are always engaging with the problematic of overtaking nature or being overtaken by it.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Excerpts from the Analects of Confucius , Peng Hung-Chih explores the relationship between Confucianism and religion. Specifically, the piece questions the influence of Confucian teachings on the role of the intellectual in contemporary Chinese society. While Confucianism has its own ritual systems and temples, it is not known to be overly concerned with supernatural beings such as gods and demons.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Ecotone by Enar de Dios Rodríguez is a video work presented in six chapters, each beginning and ending with a one-sided telephone dialog with an informal, friendly and conversational tone, that leads quickly into complex philosophical subjects. The first chapter is an introduction, and the last is an epilogue, and both employ interfaces (a smartphone screen, and an optical illusion, respectively) to invite the viewer to make conceptual connections across the chapters. An “ecotone” is a region of transition between two biological communities.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shot in Oliveto Lucano, a village in the south of Italy, AUTOTROFIA (meaning self-eating) by artist Anton Vidokle is a cinéma vérité style film that slides fictive characters into real situations, and vice-versa, to draw a prolonged meditation on the cycle of life, seasonal renewal, and ecological awareness. Combining fictional and non-fictional content, the film slips an interpretative script based on the writings of the painter Vassily Chekrygin, and the scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, within the context of an ancient pagan fertility ritual still practiced in the region. The film’s impressionistic plot revolves around the ecological dimensions of Russian Cosmism.

Installation (Installation)

Adam Smith