Hana Island Super Agency

Date: 2013
Media: Mixed media installation
Size: 3 × 3 × 10 (m)

Details:
My thesis project, HANA Island Super Agency, is a mixed-media installation work, which simulates the reception area of a fake agency located in a holiday resort. There are extremely detailed CG animations projected on two of the installation’s walls; a grand logo is displayed on the monitor; and armchairs, indoor plants and an office carpet are employed to create a seemingly calm, peaceful, everyday scene. However, the ambience here is tainted with death, a world resembling “the smile of a corpse in a funeral home”.


Some elements in this piece were extracted from a real Chinese tourist city named Hainan Island. The island was originally demarcated as one of China’s special economic zones based on the country’s economic reform policy; it is a place where people rapidly accumulate capital and power. Since the island has rich tourism resources, the tourism industry unites mass media making non-stop propaganda and manufacturing consumer demands in order to encourage people to consume . However, the island has been ruined by rapid and extreme development; many unfinished buildings have been left on the island after the housing bubble burst in 1990s. For me, the interesting point is how a dilapidated island has been figured as paradise by propaganda. It’s a case in which the boundaries between reality and spectacle have become extremely contorted.

Exhibition Details︎︎︎

Video projection on the wall︎︎︎

Posters︎︎︎
Process︎︎︎