Bo Wang
1982 | Chongqing, China
Lives in Chongqing and Amsterdam
He is a visual artist and filmmaker, and received his master of fine arts at the School of Visual Arts, New York, United States. In his videos, films and installations, he incorporates the socio-political and cultural context of Asia, especially China, analyzing structures of power, economy and ideology. His works have been shown at institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum (2022); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England (2017); the Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States (2017); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2017); and events such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2020); the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, South Korea (2019). He was artist in residence at ACC-Rijksakademie, Gwangju and Amsterdam (2017–2018); and at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2016). He lives between Chongqing and Amsterdam.
The Revolution Will Not Be Air-Conditioned, 2022
Video, 27'.
The work borrows its title from comments made on social media in the initial frenzy of protests against extraditions in Hong Kong in 2019, and which originally makes a direct reference to the work of the black civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron and his poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” written in 1970. The artist mixes images of clashes between protesters and the police in Hong Kong, often against a backdrop of vast air-conditioned shopping malls, interspersed with archival footage of the Crystal Palace, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London; of 19th century prototype terrariums used in the botanical trade of the British Empire; and 20th century corporate sales training videos from. The video reflects not only on how shopping centers, as a spatial form, evolved from their colonial roots of conquest to a machine of consumerism and social control, but also on how their architectural design can be subverted, converting isolated and sterilized spaces into a field of political action and dissent.