Faculty of Art

Photography

Haoyu Wang

Exeunt of Containers

This photographic series features spectacle scenes, including my serious and humorous responses to modernity.

“When we examine the objects that humanity treasures, museums are the soul of the process of civilization. Among the collections in museums, from the clay pots burnt in the early days of agricultural civilization to the golden coffins that held mummies in ancient Egypt, containers are a significant subset of them. If we were to reclassify these treasures by function, containers would be a massive category. However, the functions that containers provide can no longer satisfy the needs of the modern world, and they have retreated behind glass cases in museums. Our current era is characterized by a vast vacuum left by the exeunt of containers.'Containers' is the metaphor I have constructed. Extracted from the pre-modern society, it serves as a commonality to explore the vacuum left behind by the exeunt of containers in my work created from 2022 to 2023. In it, I create a series of spectacle scenes that directly confront the vacuum in the process of social progress. The combination of my starting point and the techniques used to present it makes this a combination punch I throw at modernity and the way we live today.”