Exhibition/展期: 10.06 – 11.03.2017
Reception/開幕: 10.06.2017, 6-8 PM
456 Broadway 3rd Floor | New York | NY | 10013
The Chinese American Arts Council (CAAC) and Gallery 456 are delighted to present R esistance is Futile , an exhibition of installation works by Berlin- and Taipei-based artist Musquiqui Chihying (b. 1985). This is his first soloshow in New York. Chihying’s recent works investigate the post-colonial and post-immigrant ideology embedded in the images and media culture of a globalized society, questioning the power structures around seeing and being seen.
The exhibition features 4 media installations the artist created since 2016, which centered the complex tension and distortion between human beings and the camera. Printed on films, The Figure is a series of digital images with people covering their faces, which is a straightforward gesture to resist the intrusion of the camera. In keeping with Chihying’s interest in discovering the invisible in current historical narratives, Camera(36) and Camera(16) imagined the world behind the camera lens when subtle resistance took place. By turning the camera toward the people who controlled the machine, Camera(36) recreated the scene Leni Riefenstahl’s shooting Olympics when Korean athlete Sohn Kee-chung tried to covered symbolic Japanese icon on his shirt; while Camera(16) imagined the worker shooting the film which Tzu-yu Chou, a Taiwanese star in popular Korean girl band, apologized for waving Taiwan national flag in a showbiz program. The fourth piece attempts to envision the message from cameras. By using flash light and luminous paint, The Flash sends the message to human — resistance is futile — from the perspective of machines.
The exhibition title takes its name from popular sci-fi franchise Star Trek, which is delivered by the villain The Borg . The Borg is a group of cybernetic drones that assimilates the culture of the conquered. When our perception is gradually expanded and replaced by digital apparatuses, are we eventually become the Borg in the future?
The exhibition at Gallery 456 is organized by curator Shih-yu Hsu, with special thanks to SCREEN.