Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech 2018: The Precariousness

For her Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech exhibition The Precariousness, which responded to the theme “Social Mobility,” LI Jia explored the ways artists respond to the complex problems created by increasingly frequent changes in social mobility and spatial change.

In confronting the harsh realities of society, improving our world is not something we can do in isolation. It requires collective action and an openness to new solutions. Art is a vital tool in this process—a means to express and awaken people by transforming feelings into tangible ideas.

In The Precariousness, LI Jia wanted to address the need for creative understanding and expression in humanity’s struggle to improve, and to think about alternative imaginings and choices, bound by a popular ethics and a sense of responsibility. “What we are confronting is more of a continuous state of emergency,” states LI Jia. “We are incapable of bearing this weight, and, in the midst of this isolation and loneliness, we unconsciously drift towards an unknown future.”

In projects from eight artists and three groups that included compilations of texts, archives, on-site interactivity, physical and online resources, as well as a database and browsing platform, The Precariousness explored a range of ways to express the theme of movement in the context of global capitalism, particularly within China.