Until July 22, the bitforms gallery in New-York presents « Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity », a group exhibition curated by research collective EST featuring artworks by Ho Rui An, Jen Liu, Ingrid Zhuang, Zheng Bo, and O Zhang.
EST (Eastern Standard Time) is a research collective co-founded by Celine Wong Katzman, Son Kit, and Diane Zhou. EST questions the Western imaginary of Asia as a monolithic entity.
Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity presents narratives that complicate the prevailing idea of globalization as a force emanating directly from privileged Western centers. Engaging with a variety of speculative models, these works explore the dynamics of emergent networks of power within the global landscape and its local permutations.
Ho Rui An’s lecture and video installation, DASH, dissects the obfuscating metaphors of crisis management favored by government agencies and corporate bodies. Jen Liu integrates live action and animation in Pink Slime Caesar Shift, a video that presents four proposals to transform the DNA of mass-produced in-vitro hamburgers into carriers of secret messages of labor insurrection on behalf of Special Economic Zone factory workers in China.
In light of Western anxieties around its rising economic power, Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity examines China—its government, bounds, inhabitants, and diaspora—as a case study. The presented works comment both directly and indirectly on China’s challenge to the assumed linearity of globalization, calling attention to labor, citizenship, ecology, and the fleshy materiality of the state within an artificial vision of frictionless growth.
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Cover: Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity, bitforms gallery, 2018. Left to right: Bo Zheng, Proposal I, 2018; Jen Liu, Pink Slime Caesar Shift, 2018. Courtesy bitforms gallery, New York. Photo: Emile Askey.
Image 1: Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity, bitforms gallery, 2018. Left to right: Ingrid Zhuang, Natural Tasting, 2015-2016; Bo Zheng, Proposal I, 2018. Courtesy bitforms gallery, New York. Photo: Emile Askey.
Image 2: Outside the Palace of Heavenly Purity, bitforms gallery, 2108. Left to right: O Zhang, Salute to the Patriot, 2008; Ingrid Zhuang, Natural Tasting, 2015-2016. Courtesy bitforms gallery, New York. Photo: Emile Askey.
