For Neoglobalidad, and to celebrate the stage represented by his time in Geneva, around 10,000 photographs by Galaxia Wang have been brought together on a huge fresco covering 60 square metres. During the five years he has spent in Geneva, he will have accumulated almost 35,000 photos of receptions, portraits, selfies, views of exhibitions, or indeed performances, on an Instagram account which allowed the whole Genevan community to find out “the place to be” in l [...]
For Neoglobalidad, and to celebrate the stage represented by his time in Geneva, around 10,000 photographs by Galaxia Wang have been brought together on a huge fresco covering 60 square metres. During the five years he has spent in Geneva, he will have accumulated almost 35,000 photos of receptions, portraits, selfies, views of exhibitions, or indeed performances, on an Instagram account which allowed the whole Genevan community to find out “the place to be” in live time. In Galaxia Wang’s work everything is about language, and the photographic act has been established as a means of developing a language appropriate to it. The title Ommatidie refers to the faceted eyes of arthropods consisting of a collection of receptors sensitive to light. This photomural appears in the exhibition as an ephemeral element (well known in the arthropod family), intended to endure for as long as the hanging, a unit of a whole not existing outside the exhibition. It is also a reference, all the more disturbing for the Genevan public who can recognize themselves in it, to the panoptic principle introduced into daily life by photography, bringing together the two purposes of being repressive and being done for free. Such an accumulation of portraits made available to a very large number of course raises questions of the right to one’s own image and to a private life, but the majority of those who appear on this album visibly consented to being involved in this social game.
Galaxia Wang (*1990, China) chose his own name, and even created his own language, Colossia (from colour and synaesthesia). He is a producer of enigmatic cosmogonies, liable to overturn fixed identities, an astrologist, a Lepidoptera enthusiast, and an inventor of all sorts of systems. He holds a BA in visual arts from China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, and an MA, from the “Workmaster” programme of HEAD – Geneva. Galaxia Wang has shown his creative works at Liveinyourhead, the curatorial institute of HEAD – Geneva; Forde, Geneva; TENT Academy Awards, Rotterdam; Halle Nord, Geneva; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne; CAN, Neuchâtel; and elsewhere. He was awarded the Prix New Heads – Fondation BNP Paribas Art Awards in 2016. He also exhibited at the Centre d’Art Contemporain of Geneva in 2017 at the end of a four-month residency.
Photography : Galaxia Wang, Ommatidie, 2017