Cage
Cage (2019) is a light installation created for the Emergency exhibition in 2019, a collective exhibition in the central London Underground platform Southwark. Emergency addressed the dramatic and uncertain conditions besetting our society. At that time, I was inspired by Olafur Eliasson's In Real Life exhibition at the Tate Modern. You rarely see an audience behave like joyful children in a gallery space. It was one of the most entrancing shows I have seen. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he conceived and realized his idea.
"Cage"2019
Dimension variable
Light installation
Back then, I was inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s In Real Life exhibition in Tate Modern. You rarely see the audience this joyful in the gallery space as a kid. It’s indeed one of the most entrancing shows I have seen. I spent a lot of time staying there trying to riddle out how he conceived his work and taking it as a reference. I try to express the relationship between animals and humans in the process of evolution, and animals have always been in a suppressed position. It’s a fantastic experience for homo sapiens to see these zoo animals incarcerated in a small enclosure for our entertainment and education benefits. When the audience walks into the installation, their shadows will be reflected as if they are the animals been lockdown in a cage. The work function as role reversal helps modern people to feel and understand animals and how it reacts with the environment which I thought it’s a concise and vivid way to show the pathological relationship between humans and animals.
