Date: 29 August – 16 December 2022
Opening hours: Weekdays 9am – 5pm
Location: Australian Centre on China in the World, Building 188, Fellows Lane, The Australian National University
More information can be found here
Curated by Ari Heinrich, Gabriel Remy-Handfield, and Ashley Lee Wong.
About the exhibition:
Screen Bodies is a solo exhibition by Lu Yang, one of the most highly acclaimed new media artists in China today. Part of a generation of artists who grew up with digital technologies, Lu Yang has had unprecedented access to a variety of cultures and aesthetics, both underground and popular. Working in a range of digital forms from motion capture performances to video games, 3D animation, virtual reality, and augmented reality, the artist draws on references as diverse as Japanese manga, science fiction, video games, Buddhist philosophy and iconography, as well as biotechnology and the neurosciences.
Lu Yang’s unique multi-media worlds—and the variety of screen bodies that inhabit them, from gender-neutral avatars to “digital grotesques”—can be simultaneously psychedelic and inviting, entertaining and confronting. The exhibition features a selection of Lu Yang’s video and game artworks that spans his career so far. Put on a pair of headphones and watch one of Lu Yang’s videos in the main room, including Cancer Baby (2014) and Delusional Mandala (2015) and his more recent Doku: Digital Alaya (2021). Or venture into the back of the gallery to play one of Lu Yang’s computer games, The Great Adventure of Material World (2020), for yourself.
The exhibition is presented alongside the launch of a special issue of Screen Bodies, The Journal of Embodiment, Media Arts, and Technology, dedicated to the work of the artist. We invite you to read more about these works in a new collection of essays available in the gallery.
About the Artist:
Lu Yang (1984-, Shanghai) has presented solo exhibitions at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (2021); Spiral, Tokyo (2018); and M Woods Museum, Beijing (2017). And in Australia, the artist has participated in the group exhibition Ultra Unreal at the MCA Australia (2022) as well as a live motion capture performance at the Sydney Opera House in Oct 2022. Lu Yang’s work continues to attract audiences from across the globe, whether in the art world at the 2022 Venice Biennale or in the worlds of music and fashion through videos the artist has created for the British band The 1975 and the sports label Li Ning.
About the Curators:
Ari Larissa Heinrich is Professor of Chinese Literature and Media at the Australian National University. He writes about contemporary visual cultures from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, with a focus on experimental works that employ biological materials like body parts, pathological specimens, and organic chemicals. www.ariheinrich.com
Ashley Lee Wong is a curator and researcher based in Hong Kong. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of MetaObjects, a studio that facilitates digital projects with artists and cultural institutions. She completed a PhD at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. www.metaobjects.org
Gabriel Remy-Handfield is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and East Asian visual art and culture at the University of Montreal. His academic interests encompass contemporary art and visual culture, focusing on queer studies, new materialisms, critical posthumanism, Deleuze and Guattari studies, Buddhist philosophy, performance studies, and the new media/ digital arts. His dissertation examines the aberrant aesthetics of the work of Lu Yang.