After Human: Marks of the Beasts

EVENT DESCRIPTION

The thought-provoking exhibition After Human: Marks of the Beasts explores storytelling as a tool for marking the significant impact of humans on animals. It sheds light on the ideas and figures of animals as an integral part of East Asian cultures, where the ideologies and cosmologies behind them often remain hidden.

Hosted at Tomorrow Maybe from 26 March to 28 April, the exhibition features video, installation, and performance artworks by local and international artists, including Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen (UK/BE), Sungsil Ryu (KR), Zoe Marden (UK/HK), Future Host (Tingying Ma and Kang Kang) (US/CN), Joy Li (CN/US), Mui Hoi Ying (HK), and Hou CHing (HK/DE). These artworks speculate on animals as mythical beings, forms of capital, and objects of aesthetic interest, blending elements of ethnography and fiction.

Taking all different narratives of animals built in the works as a starting point, this exhibition attempts to imagine a human-animal world that is not from the viewpoint of utilitarian individualism – human-centric, profit-maximizing, desire-driven – and instead envisions humans becoming a collective with other species through symbiosis, kinship, or even shapeshifting. The Earth, it seems, will be for the survival of all species.