Visa 签证

Creator(s)

Guang-Yi WANG 王广义

Preview

Date

1994

Format

Slide

Exhibition Event Title

The 22nd São Paulo Biennial Art Exhibition

Date of Exhibition Event

1994

Location of Exhibition Event

São Paulo, Brazil

Materials

Photographs, artificial wool, wooden box, and more

Dimensions

100 x 80 x 60 x 28 cm

Description

This installation(s) takes various forms. Different however, these forms consist of two main components: wool-sleeved red (or at times other colors) boxes marked with work "VISA" on their front sides, and similarly wool-encased boxes printed with a child picture and artwork (blended with the artist's) information. Different forms of the work take up different quantity of the boxes (two types respectively) and have different arrangements on the boxes. To comment on the work's significance, Wang says "A person has a series of necessary documents from birth to death. Visa can be said to be the most ideological among them. It puts everyone under the power of the state. What 'VISA' wants to reveal is exactly the 'national image' derived from the visa offices of all countries in the world... When people are engaged in cultural exchanges, you must have a 'visa' with another country. And when you are processing such visa, you will face the pressure of other countries’ politic. This pressure and cultural exchanges themselves constitute a kind of paradox. So I created the work "VISA" with this kind of idea within." (Translated from Chinese). (Note that three photographs of this work in this entry are the work's reprisal in the "New Asian Art Show" in 1995.) (He Art Museum 合美术馆，一篇文章读懂王广义30年艺术路！, 2016, 一馆收藏，available on http://www.1shoucang.com/article-36873-1.html) (Jerry Wu'23).