Carnival 2020
2018
Color digital video installation with sound
4 min., 53 sec.


The Chinese government is building a social credit system to rate the trustworthiness of 1.4 billion people. If you do something ‘good’, like volunteer at a charity and donate blood, your score goes up. If you do something ‘bad’, like jaywalk, cancel a reservation, or if you are friends with someone with a low rating, your score drops. The absurd world in the television series Black Mirror is becoming a reality in China.
 
Carnival 2020 invites participants to simulate the reality of “future credit society”. They will be asked to complete a series of carnivalesque missions to raise their credit scores, and use the earned credit scores to redeem ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’. This project is intended to let the audience experience the credit system through highly immersive experiences. The participants will experience how the system eliminates the humanism and shamelessly reconstructs our lives.


 

Smarter City Ⅱ
2018
Interactive color digital video installation with sound, infrared sensor, augmented reality application
Dimension varies
 

Smarter City 2 is an interactive video installation that encourages participants to interact with the fictitious characters and symbols situated in a subway and explore the absurd data/information related to them.
 
One side of the installation consists of a large projection screen that is similar to a life-size subway train. Audiences will be invited to stand inside the four-designed spot in front of the ‘subway’, where the infrared light sensors will be triggered by their movements. The fictitious characters will then be alienated and transformed into a new form and their personal data will be leaked. On the other side of the installation, the interaction will be realized through the augmented reality application installed in IPads and IPhones that are prepared in the gallery. The camera on IPad/IPhone will sense the images in the subway station such as the exhibition posters and the sign of 洛杉京 Los Jing (a virtual city in combination of Los Angeles and Beijing) subway stop to trigger new characters, objects and textual information.
 
There are countless data circling around us every day. We are living in moments under the definition of global data. In every such moment, there are enjoyment, curiosity and danger. We rely on data, but also suffer from data crash and surveillance, or become stuck in the virtual reality/real virtuality situation. What will happen when the virtual subway becomes an ordinary part of the real world? What are the possibilities of the passengers? Which subway station are we heading next?
 

Exhibition History of Smarter City 2
2018 - Art(ists) on the Verge 9, Rochester Art Center — Rochester, MN, USA
2018 - RE-SET, Powerlong Museum — Shanghai, China
 


The Last Subway
2017
Color Digital Video with Sound
9 min., 23sec


The animated video The Last Subway follows the narrative of a fictitious video game protagonist ZiyangMon (referring to Pokémon Go) who transforms into a live person. Featuring a late night subway where a series of absurd and carnivalesque stories take place, the viewer travels between mock CCTV newscasts, tbe Japanese pop music video Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, virtual reality footage, and a constructed subway station Los Jing (A virtual city in the combination of Los Angeles and Beijing); shifting between levels of reality like a video game. The work hints at how the virtual world increasingly influences human consciousness on both a macro and micro scale in our highly globalized and digitized society.


Exhibition History of The Last Subway
2017 - Illimitation, China Academy of Art — Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
2017 - The Model of the World: Zhangzhou International Contemporary Art Exhibition,    
            Zhangzhou Museum — Zhangzhou, Fujian, China
2017 - Amassing Force, Today Art Museum— Beijing, China
2017 - Dead Air, Cohen Gallery, Brown University — Providence, Rhode Island, USA







 

The Story of The Pig
2016
Color Digital Video with Sound
8 min., 42 sec


The Story of the Pig brings the viewer through to an absurd techno world where pigs adopt human-like debased actions, clicking photos of each other as they perform, breeding conformity and haplessly surrendering their freedom – They are destroyed by power in the first chapter (A world related to Aldous Huxley’s 1984) and self-destroyed by entertainment in the second chapter (A world related to George Orwell’s Brave New World) of the video. I appropriated the song “Fantastic Baby” from the Korean pop band BIGBANG, in which the pigs become infatuated with pop culture and ultimately become fans themselves of BIGBANG. The pigs lose their inner feeling and both their rational and creative spirit from a grotesque overdose of stimulation, entertainment and desire. 


Exhibition History of The Story of The Pig
2017 - Andy Warhol: Minnesota Goes Pop, Rochester Art Center — Rochester, Minnesota, USA
2017 - WAVELENGTH II, The Hole Gallery — New York, USA
2017 - TimeLine, Rogue Space Chelsea — New York, USA
2016 - Ancestors are so yesterday, 2016 MCAD Faculty Biennial — Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
2016 - Meredith Sands / Ziyang Wu. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, USA
2016 - New Contemporaries: Selected work from the class of 2016. Gelman Gallery —Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2016 - RISD 2016 MFA Painting Thesis. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, NY, USA
2016 - RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2016. Rhode Island Convention Center — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2016 - The City’s Ephemeral Gestures, Providence Biennial for Contemporary Art — Providence, Rhode Island, USA





 

Xia Che Dan (Bullshit)
2015
Color Digital Video with Sound
7 min., 4 sec
Foam, Wood, Metal
Dimension varies
 

Xia Che Dan means bullshit in Mandarin. It also means “shrimp pulling penis” if translated incorrectly character by character in Chinese. Talking bullshit is a cultural disease of current times, from society to individuals. I transformed the provocative nature of this word and the mistranslation from verbal into something visual with this piece.


Exhibition History of Xia Che Dan (bullshit)

2017 - Amassing Force, Today Art Museum — Beijing, China
2016 - Meredith Sands / Ziyang Wu. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, USA
2016 - Falling. Extra Credit Gallery — Providence, Rhode Island, USA




Peng Ci (Staged Crash)
2015
Color Digital Video with Sound
4 min., 5 sec  
 

Peng Ci (Staged Crash) presents people’s struggle of truth. They are all holding different opinions and uncompromising. The Staged crashed person, police, money and onlookers, They refer to morality, economy, judiciary and society. These symbols are intertwined, like expanding fragmentations. They squeeze, push, avoid and conflict each other, becoming social spatial structure that is connected and full of conflicts. 

Exhibition History of Peng Ci (Staged Crash)
2017 - WAVELENGTH: Rhapsody In Lines, Times Art Museum — Beijing, China
2016 - Meredith Sands / Ziyang Wu. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, USA
2016 - Art Jiangxi International Fair, Nanchang International Exhibition Center — Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
2016 - Circling Justice: The Art of Conflict Resolution, Perpich Center for the Arts — Golden Valley, MN, USA
2016 - Falling. Extra Credit Gallery — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2016 - RISD 2016 MFA Painting Thesis. Nancy Margolis Gallery — New York, NY, USA
2016 - Prisoners Cinema. Gelman Gallery — Providence, Rhode Island, USA
2015 - The ROCI Road to Peace: Experiments in the Unfamiliar. Academy Art Museum — Easton, Maryland, USA




 

Past Painting Works

Ticket
2015
TV monitor, acrylic  on foam
28 x 35 x 13 inches
11 min., 8 sec
 



 Iridescent Cloud 3
2015
Oil and Acrylic on linen
72 x 48 inches
 


Floating 1
2015
Acrylic, ink-jet transfer on linen
24 x 16 inches
 


Floating 2
2015
Acrylic, ink-jet transfer on linen
24 x 18 inches



Floating 3
2015
Acrylic, ink-jet transfer on linen
24 x 18 inches



Drifting – Substitution
2015
Oil and Acrylic on Linen
52 x 24 inches