The Centre for Cultural Studies

Weapon of the Weak by Chinese artist, Wang Tuo(王拓)

March 14, 2023

Weapon of the Weak by Chinese artist, Wang Tuo(王拓)

 

Weapon of the Weak by Chinese artist, Wang Tuo(王拓), hosted by the M.A. in Cultural Management Programme and the Centre for Cultural Studies in the Department of Cultural & Religious Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

 

  • Speaker: Wang Tuo (Artist, based in Beijing)
  • Moderator: Prof. Yongwoo Lee
  • Date: 2023. March 14th (Tuesday)
  • Time: 8:00pm ~ 9:30 pm (Hong Kong Time) including Q&A
  • Venue: Chen Kou Bun Building, CKB 109, CUHK  and on Zoom

 

  • Abstract: Wang Tuo’s work is a powerful examination of modern Chinese history that untangles collective unconsciousness and historical trauma through glimpses into his protagonists’ troubled psyches. Wang’s speculative films excavate and revive archives as contexts in which to reproduce and evoke modern Chinese history and social reality. Intertwining multiple texts and contemporary narratives, Wang’s work ruminates on the universal connotations and historical complicity rooted in our subconscious and dramatic, absurd, yet powerless realities. In this talk, Wang will elaborate his thoughts on how the artist confront current condition through the lens of history and how the artist uses art as a weapon of the weak in social resistance, through his recent projects The Northeast Tetralogy and The Second Interrogation.

 

  • Short Biography

 

Wang Tuo (b. 1984, Changchun, China) interweaves Chinese modern history, cultural archives, fiction and mythology into speculative narratives. Equating his practice to novel writing, he stages an intervention in historical literary texts and cultural archives to formulate stories that blur the boundaries of time and space, facts, and imagination. His work spans across film, performative elements, painting, and drawing. The multidimensional chronologies he constructs, interspersed with conspicuous and hidden clues, expose the underlying historical and cultural forces at work within society. Embracing a uniquely Chinese hauntology, Wang proposes “Pan-Shamanization” as an entry point to unravel the suppressed and untreated memories of 20th century China. Through historical inquiry, Wang’s works, often unsettling and dramatic, disentangle collective unconsciousness and historical traumas. His more recent work critiques contemporary conditions of censorship, more specifically the tensions within the push and pull between artist and authority.

 

Wang has recent solo shows at UCCA, Beijing; Present Company, New York; Salt Project, Beijing; Taikang Space, Beijing, and recent group shows at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden- Baden; Queens Museum, New York; Zarya Center for Contemporary Art, Vladivostok; 13th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai; OCAT, Shenzhen & Shanghai; How Art Museum, Shanghai; Times Museum, Guangzhou; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung. Wang Tuo was an Artist in Residence at the Queens Museum, New York from 2015 to 2017. He won the China Top Shorts Award and the Outstanding Art Exploration Award for Chinese Short Films in Beijing International Short Film Festival 2018. Wang Tuo is the winner of the Three Shadows Photography Award 2018 and the Youth Contemporary Art Wuzhen Award 2019. He was awarded a research residency at KADIST San Francisco 2020.

 

For more information, please visit artist’s webpage

Wang Tuo: https://www.tuo-wang.com

 

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/mycuform/view.php?id=1902148

Enquiry: haoqianyu@cuhk.edu.hk