Asia in Motion – Video Art and Beyond

Video artworks numbered few until twenty years ago, but today video art became a medium for artistic expression that many Asian artists also employ.  The technological environment surrounding video varies from country to country in Asia.  With the economic growth in the 90s, video art has rapidly spread across Asia since 2000.  Along with the technological development, expressions of video art are increasingly diversified – ranging from those infused with the experimental spirit, to creating visual spectacle and interactive works.

This exhibition shows video artworks from end of the 60s to the present, through three themes; “Documenting the Body”, “Perspectives on Daily Life” and “Looking at Society through Popular Culture”.  Every artist captures the motion of his/her environment from a unique and distinct perspective.

Documenting the Body

There are many artists who draw a lot of interest in the body like the artists in this section, Zhang Peili and Kwak Dockjun.  These artists use video not only as a recording medium, but as a device for exaggeration or expansion of the body expression, through which the body becomes a subject to be explored objectively.  These video works seem to stimulate our senses which get dull and blunt in daily life.

Perspectives on Daily Life

The artists in this section weave their fictional narratives into the footage of ordinary life.  By doing so, the boundary between reality and fiction becomes unclear.  But even in our daily life, the answer to what is real and fiction seems less clear as our world is increasingly saturated with information.  The artists may be responding or raising questions to such “reality” through their serene works.

Looking at Society through Popular Culture

At the present day, various forms of popular culture such as games, animations, popular music are penetrating across the world.  By using popular culture, a language familiar to many people, as a means of expression, the works in this section reveal global or local realities – such as issues of war or national identity, and relationship among people in urban city.