What We Are

EVENT DESCRIPTION

DE SARTHE is pleased to present What We Are, inaugurating the year with a eight-artist group exhibition that reflects upon manifestations of human nature under contemporary context. Featuring a curated body of videos, installations, photographic works, as well as works on canvas, the exhibition inquires into the corners and alleys of the human psyche and illumines both the motivations and complexities behind our subconscious-driven behavior.

From the seven capital virtues and deadly sins to modern science and psychology, the subject of human behavior has been speculated, theorized, judged, and justified on repeat. While our actions, and the consequences of said actions, have evolved along with the eras, the core ethos that governs humanity remains seemingly familiar. What defines humanity on the most fundamental level? What are we as a collective entity?

The selection of artists in What We Are samples from varied aspects of being human in the 21st century. Dong Jinling and Lin Zhipeng a.k.a 223 illustrates humanity via an examination of our physical receptacles. Dong’s video and photographic artworks depict the artist expressing milk from her left breast into the air and the consequential asymmetry of her chest. An autonomous act of defiance against normative expectations, the artworks not only challenge the man-made boundaries of gender identity but the notion of utilitarian biology itself. 223’s poetically suggestive imagery situates itself on a precarious line between salacious and playful. They carry a soft carelessness – lighthearted and innocent – as well as a certain optimism in a hedonistic life that goes against the grain of monotony.

Lin Jingjing and Ma Sibo’s artworks compares two contrasting modes of being: within a collective versus in solitary existence. Lin Jingjing’s mixed media artwork portrays a group in uniform, performing morning calisthenics as a common daily routine in China. Within the composition, embroidered light rays emit systematically from each individual to form an intersecting matrix. Not unlike a school of fish or a flock of birds, the exercisers appear as if a larger entity from a distance. On the contrary, Ma Sibo’s hazy work on canvas reveals a singular figure, silhouetted against a glaring background. Bathed in light yet inducing no clarity, Ma’s artwork alludes to the unknown potentials shrouded within space and silence, as well as the room to wander and be lost when strayed from the crowd.

Immersed in another quiet but detailed soundscape, Xin Yunpeng’s video artwork delivers a narrative formed around his mother’s prayers on a rainy night. Observing from a single fixed angle, the video paints a nuanced picture comprising soft patter on the window, creaking doors, sporadic strikes of thunder, and a mother’s voice praying unintelligibly but restlessly in the background. An unexpected scene near the end reveals a clue in regard to her wishes. Enveloped within an unspoken relationship between a mother and son, Xin Yunpeng’s artwork elucidates the human compulsion to seek hope, unrelentingly and in spite of reality.

Mak2 and Zhong Wei elucidates the marks and likeness that we impart to the inventions of man. From the digital landscape of the Internet to the uncanny valley of AI, human beings have been determined to perfect the virtual replicas of our consciousness. Mak2’s dual-channel film uses found footage of the famed robot Sophia and plays it alongside a duplicated video on which she deepfakes her own face. In simulating herself via Sophia as a vessel, the artist questions not only the limitations that we set upon ourselves when existing as 1s and 0s, but moreover, our willingness to be subsumed under alternative forms of being in the name of improvement or immortality. Zhong Wei’s dynamic work on canvas peers into the chaotic world of the Internet. A study of this man-made ecology, the artwork not only identifies the traces of human that seeps through the coldness of the computer screen but suggests how inherent human traits may be amplified via the infinite stretch of the Internet.

In defending for autonomy over our own bodies, in seeking safety in the herd or introspection by oneself, in praying to higher powers, and in pursuing eternal life and alternative forms of existence – there is an intrinsic characteristic shared among these behaviors: a desire to decide the way we live. The final artwork in the exhibition is a kinetic installation by Zhou Wendou. Within the artwork, two pairs of body-less legs extend from underneath a long desk, crossed and shaking sprightly. Removing any context, the artist places the focus on a singular action resultant of unconscious habits, justified by none other than to act on impulse – and we ask, what are we if not a collection of internalized behaviors? What are we if not an expression of what we yearn and covet? What are we if not the same set of instincts that has driven the evolution of humanity from the beginning of time?