Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech 2021: Dream·Monolith·Revelation

Responding to the theme “Resonant Cities,” Fiona Wang’s Hyundai Blue Prize Art + Tech 2021 exhibition Dream·Monolith·Revelation examined Space Art. The story-based exhibition was unfolded in three segments: “Departure with a Dream,” “Place with a Monolith,” and “Return with a Revelation,” which work together to decode a narrative about Space Art. The exhibition featured an immersive element, with the aim of making audiences feel like they were enveloped in a dynamic and floating river of tai-chi, or the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.

The exhibition was designed as a dichotomous structure. Inspired by the “swiping right to like” and “swiping left to dislike” mechanism found in virtual dating apps—which leads users to two different spaces—this structure served as a metaphor for the ways our emotions are manipulated online. Such romantic relationships are often perceived as “natural” interactions, despite not occurring in the same physical space—they involve groundless affection and remote performances of sexual desire. In this dynamic, the internet offers greater freedom for millennials to express their instinctual egos, as the physical world and its inhabitants increasingly feel distant. These subtle emotions, which connect to our “inner selves,” spread ubiquitously across the fiber optic network, prompting a vital question: does connection in the virtual world mean detachment to the real world?

The exhibition began with the core technologies of Space Art, evolving into themes of cosmology and the interactions between the universe and humanity. Wang delved into whether space art inherently requires the use of space resources, whether it’s possible to go beyond these resources in our quest to connect with aerospace and the universe, and whether space art should be expressed through common human experiences rather than exclusively through science and technology.