O-1 Visas
So many apocalypses loom over us, it behooves a conscientious artist to wrestle with the near future. Three recent artworks by Xinlyu Wang, exhibited in the SAIC Galleries, envision what that might mean in terms of human memory, animal survival, and local culture. Everything filters through a catastrophic aesthetic of concrete rubble and malfunctioning tech, the ever-faulty physical and virtual structures of existence today and tomorrow. A catastrophic flood that forced the artist’s family to migrate is told via an oral history by Wang’s mother as well as archival internet data; neither succeeds in perfect recall. A lotus root and pork rib soup made by the artist’s grandmother is translated into standardized descriptive vocabulary by a large language model; the result lacks nourishment and savor. The tragedy of birds colliding with reflective glass windows on Chicago skyscrapers is rendered by a pair of minute AI-generated videos; the lack of reality neutralizes what is distressing in principle. Wang understands advanced technology well enough to use it to tactically prioritize the creaturely, which needs all the help it can get.
—Lori Waxman 7/24/26 1:28 PM