Virtual fantasy meets art at the MCA
The parameters of reality are redrawn in a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Ultra Unreal – New Myths for New Worlds is a collection of five installations that interrogate accepted norms of society, religion, cultural constructs, art, and reality itself, using mediums that range from complex CGI to film to latex sculptures.
The works featured represent the personal responses of their respective artists to ideas of identity, status, sexual and creative expression. Club Ate is Sydney-based artistic duo, Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra whose art is informed by their shared queer experiences and Filipinx heritage. In a large dark space, with a traditional woven cloth hung overhead, videos are projected onto two large, angled screens. The films show people gathered together in spiritual and traditional practices while also demonstrating individual expression.
Bangkok artist, Korakrit Arunanondchai, also uses themes of ritual and spiritualism in his installation. In collaboration with Alex Gvojic, Arunanondcha presents his work across three screens, each showing different stories, different windows into human experience. His lens is an unflinching, non-judging gaze. The room also contains a number of physical elements depicted in the films.
Lawrence Lek is an artist and musician based in London. His combines his knowledge of architecture, CGI, gaming, music with his contemplations about AI and futurism to create a digital world that is a type of dystopian simulation.
Lu Yang is a gender-fluid artist from Shanghai who uses an avatar of themself as the subject of their digital videos. Fusing Harajuku aesthetic with anime robot and sugar-pop dance moves, Lu’s work makes statements about how people choose to present themselves.
Saeborg is a queer artist from Tokyo and was in Sydney for the opening of the exhibition. Her name is a portmanteau of her actual name, Saeko Oi, and “cyborg” – she see’s herself as part human, part toy. The large, cartoonish latex sculptures she creates are filled with air for the displays, but are actually costumes which are worn for special performances.
The concept for Saeborg’s art derives from queer fetish culture and cosplay, and especially from the infamous, latex-themed Department H party at Tokyo’s Kinema Club which features cabaret, striptease, drag, and dress-ups. Saeborg’s costumes are genderless and quirky and can also be endlessly modified to suit different wearers and situations. They mostly consist of non-human creatures: this exhibition includes pigs, a cow, a female farmer, large dung beetles, flies, moths.
Japan has a very traditional, patriarchal society, with strong strands of misogyny and queer-phobia. Through an interpreter, Saeborg explains that her art is subversive. but nuanced because of that hostile climate.
When she performs in costume, she enjoys seeing the various ways people react; some laugh, some are shocked, and some drop their inhibitions and start dancing the characters.
Ultra Unreal has been curated to present an immersive, engaging, non-intimidating selection of art that challenges myths about who and what makes up the human experience.
