EXHIBITIONSGenealogy Study of Artists No. 16 aaajiao: membrane

Genealogy Study of Artists No. 16
aaajiao: membrane
2023.08.27 – 2023.11.15

Start Museum is pleased to present new exhibition Genealogy Study of Artists No. 16 aaajiao: membrane from August 27 to November 15, 2023.

aaajiao is the pseudonym and internet counterpart of the artist Xu Wenkai. As an artist with a background in computer science, his works focus on new technologies, as well as the cultural and political phenomena under the media environment: his early works GFWIist, Email Trek, ddrk.me and others show the ruins of Internet information created by technological meritocracy with a kind of empathy toward things. NTFs_aaajiao created in 2021 attempts to explore how the trading rules of the ryptoeconomics can reshape the ancient art circulation model.

Compared with the technology itself, aaajiao’s creation focuses more on human selfexistence and emotional connection in an environment of increasingly rapid technological change. This exhibition will exhibit one of his most important conceptual video works I Hate People But I Love You, and the new algorithm-generated video work Prompt,. Between the emotional lips and teeth of an artificial intelligence, the audience is forced
to rethink the boundaries between technology and human beings. In the real context of high physical boundaries in recent years, aaajiao has left the familiar cultural environment and moved to Germany, but has always remained “online” in a virtual form. What the “membrane” implies is this physical relationship between isolation and penetration, and the artist’s own experience of crossing cultures, societies, even identities, adding a deep sense of alienation, displacement, and cross-cultural conflict complexity to his works.