Tiong Ang
Universality as Decorum of Thought and Desire. 2015
The workings of media images are central to Tiong Ang's multi-disciplinary installation, Universality as Decorum of Thought and Desire. This labyrinthine presentation fills an entire museum room with various projections, artifacts and posters realized in collaboration with other artists (e.g. Alejandro Ramirez, Robert Wittendorp, Heekyung Ryu and Dongyoung Lee), and evoking the sense of a corporate television studio where the visitor is submerged in an atmosphere of partially overlapping fragments, thoughts, musings, and meditations. An atmosphere that emphatically demands a different kind of sensibility –one that goes with an era characterized by multitude and division– and a corresponding awareness addressing and disrupting notions such as universal time and universality. After all, what authentic meaning is left if, for the sake of a global, transcultural discourse, compromises of universality have to be met over and over again? (Henk Slager)
© Photo: Courtesy of 1st Asia Biennial &
5th Guangzhou Triennial,
Guangdong Museum of Art
11 December 2015 - 10 April 2016, Guangzhou, China. Theme: Asia Time. Organizer: Guangdong Museum of Art. Chairman: Luo Yiping. Chief Curators: Henk Slager, Zhang Qing. Curators: Kim Hong-Hee, Ute Meta Bauer, Sarah Wilson, Sun Ge.