神秘岛（2018），单通道高清录像，彩色，有声，8:50

The Mysterious Island (2018), Single channel HD video, color, sound, 08:50

神秘岛

《神秘岛》呈现了艺术家何卉琦的影像新作，探讨当代空间形态驯服肉身的权力。该展览位于纽约三间相连的地下室中，展出作品分别呈现了一间混淆主客体关系的公寓、一组操控集体行为的城市建筑以及一个对用户施加“最佳路径”的数字流动空间。任何空间——无论是私人的、公共的抑或是虚拟的——都是运作中的系统机器，挑战及重新安排进入其中的肉身。随著现代科技不断入侵人类生活，我们的集体意识愈发疏离。时常孤身在日常生活中导航新秩序系统，其过程好似挑战一系列荒岛求生游戏。在如此险恶複杂的空间中，人是否应该夺回对自己身体的主权？

标题“神秘岛”取自凡尔纳（Jules Verne）著于1874年的科幻小说，旨在探索空间影响身体的各种方式。同名影像作品《神秘岛》（2018）影射米歇尔·福柯（Michel Foucault）的”监狱群岛”（carceral archipelago）的概念，由四个频道组成叙述一则当代生存寓言，并对高度管制的城市空间系统进行鲁滨逊荒岛般的想像。艺术家设想了孤立的一个原点，在那里人们一遍遍重置自己的生活，以反抗规训控制。《文件夹》（2017）与《无名岛》（2018）两件数字作品被安置在一个闷热狭小的水表房中，唤起观者溺水窒息般的技术恐惧。当周围环绕著漂浮的形状和声音，观者正经历著双重焦虑——意识被困在虚拟的数字迷宫的同时，身体则处于幽闭恐惧般的“潜艇”中。《局外人》（2017）则重新配置了一间看似熟悉的布鲁克林公寓，而其中主人与客人之间的界限被刻意模糊。通过打破家庭日常生活与社交场合中的规则，艺术家表达了约定俗成如何塑造人际关系，同时揭露了空间机制看似逻辑慎密，实则纯属偶然的本质。

《神秘岛》展现了各种类型的当代空间中的纪律规训机制，并假设了一种策略，可通过离奇的想象以抵御其对于肉身的驯服。我们能否进入新的领地并依然保留其神秘？我们能否以局外人的身份永居其中？

艺术家｜何卉琦，1994年生于中国长沙。本科毕业于广州美术学院国画系，硕士毕业于纽约视觉艺术学院（School of Visual Arts）艺术实践系。现居于纽约。

策展人｜白雨婷，1990年出生于中国上海。独立写作者，策展人。本科毕业于香港中文大学英美文学系毕业，2018获纽约视觉艺术学院( School of Visual Arts）策展系硕士。现居于纽约。

《神秘岛》展览现场（图片来源：郑亦然）

Installation view, Huiqi He: The Mysterious Island (2018), curated by Lux Yuting Bai

Photo credit: Jasphy Zheng

局外人（2017），单通道高清录像，彩色，有声，06:32

The Outsider (2017) Single channel HD video, color, sound, 06:32

局外人（2017），单通道高清录像，彩色，有声，06:32

The Outsider (2017) Single channel HD video, color, sound, 06:32 

神秘岛（2018），单通道高清录像，彩色，有声，8:50

The Mysterious Island (2018),Single channel HD video, color, sound, 08:50

神秘岛（2018），单通道高清录像，彩色，有声，8:50

The Mysterious Island (2018),Single channel HD video, color, sound, 08:50

《神秘岛》展览现场 （图片来源：郑亦然）

Installation view, Huiqi He: The Mysterious Island (2018), curated by Lux Yuting Bai

Photo credit: Jasphy Zheng

《神秘岛》展览现场 （图片来源：郑亦然）

Installation view, Huiqi He: The Mysterious Island (2018), curated by Lux Yuting Bai

Photo credit: Jasphy Zheng

《神秘岛》展览现场 （图片来源：郑亦然）

Installation view, Huiqi He: The Mysterious Island (2018), curated by Lux Yuting Bai

Photo credit: Jasphy Zheng

《神秘岛》展览现场 （图片来源：郑亦然）

Installation view, Huiqi He: The Mysterious Island (2018), curated by Lux Yuting Bai

Photo credit: Jasphy Zheng

The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island features Huiqi He’s new installations that investigate the disciplinary power of space on the docile human body. The works explore a home where the subject-object relation complicates, a set of urban architecture designed to manipulate collective behavior, and a digital “space of flows” that imposes optimal paths upon its users. Each space – whether private, public, or virtual – is machinery that challenges and rearranges the body that enters it. As the constant advancement of ever more intrusive technology continues to intensify our collective sense of alienation, the process of navigating new systems of order in everyday life is like a series of survival games on a strange island. Should one strive to reclaim the sovereignty of one’s body in such treacherous spaces?

Titled after Jules Verne’s 1874 novel, the exhibition takes place in three interconnected underground rooms that explore various ways in which space affects the operation of the body. The first gallery presents The Mysterious Island (2018), an allegorical story that evokes Michel Foucault’s concept of “carceral archipelago,” a prison consisting of a series of islands. Radically reimagining the highly-regulatory urban space as a Robinson-Crusoe-wasteland, the artist envisions isolation as a point of origin where one can reset one’s life against disciplinary control. Representing the digital space, The Folder (2017) and Untitled (2018) are installed in a muggy water meter room that recalls fears of drowning and technology. The viewer experiences double anxieties as they are trapped virtually in the cyber maze and physically in the claustrophobic submarine-like space surrounded by floating shapes and sounds of water. The Outsider (2017) reconfigures a familiar Brooklyn apartment where the distinction between the host and the guest is obscured. Breaking the quotidian patterns and social coding of the home, the video reveals the arbitrary nature of the functions assigned to domestic spaces and how these associations shape social relationships. 

The Mysterious Island demonstrates the disciplinary mechanisms of various types of contemporary spaces and imagines strategies of resistance through the uncanny. Can we enter a new territory and allow it to remain mysterious? Can we inhabit a space and resist making it our home?

Huiqi He (b. 1994, Changsha, China) is an artist based in New York. After studying traditional Chinese painting at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art, she is now pursuing an MFA in Art Practice at School of Visual Arts. 

The Mysterious Island is curated by Lux Yuting Bai (b. 1990, Shanghai, China) an independent writer and curator based in New York. She received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.Now pursuing her masters as a Curatorial Fellow at School of Visual Arts.