2022.09.20 – 2022.11.19

Han Yajuan

The Columns Gallery is pleased to present Hello Human, an exhibition about the relationship between human form and virtual space, featuring the artist Han Yajuan. The exhibition invites you to explore a future scenario where unprecedented technological transformations facilitate the mass migration of humans to virtual worlds – a crossing of a threshold that will inevitably rupture the fabric of society – and the likely consequences of this change on our metaphysical experience of reality.

Han Yajuan (b.1980, China) is a contemporary artist based in Beijing, China. She is a prolific multimedia artist whose oeuvre encompasses paintings, 3D animations, videos, installations, VR, and game art. Through these mediums, Han Yajuan explores the relationship between women and virtual space, integrating the complex dynamics between agency, avatar, community, and the virtual system.

“Hello, World!” is an iconic line of text produced by running a simple computer program called “Hello, World!”. It has long been the new programmer’s induction into a myriad of programming languages. Thus “Hello Human!” is a meme adaption of this phrase, hinting at the uncanniness of another entity, the “Others”, observing and communicating with us from another dimension.

It happens at a time when the boundaries between humans and the “others” dissolve – a ” transitional era of multispecies coexistence” (Citation: [1] D Haraway, Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene 1st ed. USA: Duke University Press 2016, p. 55).

Artificial intelligence (AI) relies on algorithms to provide optimal solutions for humans. This could potentially include facilitating the mental reconstruction of humans to better adapt to new environments. Those who have been sufficiently trained by AI become more resilient to stressful conditions experienced in the new environment, such as the sense of disorientation, emotional distress, lack of coherence, and delusions. Thus better transformed into advanced agents for the AI’s interaction in the human world.

Birth of Venus 2.1.1 is an infinite space constructed and oriented by the “Others” perspective, in which the AI applies human empathy to “soul-searching” participants. When adopting the first-person perspective of the Others, humans can experience how surreal the narrative could be. The only rule of the game is that the more humans try to move forward, the further back they go.

Code of Conduct Version 22.6.1 is part of the VR GameArt Apparatus This Is Not a Game. It functions as a video trailer to position the GameArt experience from the artist’s perspective. Code of Conduct is a series of ironic, exaggerated, unreliable severe warnings against the collapse of boundaries between humans, other life forms, gaming systems, immersive virtual technologies and environments. The premise of this work is that when humans enter a virtual world, how we construct our spatial knowledge will be influenced by the digital program. The narrative explores the relationship and power dynamics between humans and the “Other”, prompting us to reflect on future ecology and anthropocentrism.

Fetishism CPU is a 3D Animation work that aims to explore the virtual identity constructed by performative selfies in the current digital age.

As an essential component of the exhibition experience, the Fetishism CPU is installed in the waiting room, where audiences view it before entering the main exhibition space. It functions as a series of warnings against the boundaries between humans and technologies.

The Columns Gallery
22 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks #01-35 Singapore 108939
+65 9030 7647

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