Ziyi Wang

Publish at Flash Art International, Issue 348 Vol. 57. Fall 2024

Ziyi Wang (b. 1999) is a digital artists specialising in moving images and digital art, exploring themes of identity and religious rituals through mysticism. Ziyi's art engages with identity, feminism, and LGBTQ+ issues, carving a unique niche in contemporary art.

The Ultimate Samsara (2022) constitutes intertwined relationships between the portraying of Chinese traditional culture, folklore and identity, combined with the exploration of sacrificial Nuo dance and diphonic singing, in a metaverse generated space. In this film, Ziyi Wang, as the Art Director and Sound Designer, explores her multifaceted range of technical interests.

The Ultimate Samsara takes inspiration from the concept of order and chaos, which is at humankind’ inception (according to some cultural believes) and the subsequent humans construction of a three-dimensional space. Traditional and modern architectural building which are erected as imposing physical structures on top of the fusion between order and disorder. The film is a computer-generated spatial environment suggesting the negation of a fixed, stable and definitive narrative. The visual narrative proposed by this space is further encouraged by the presence of sentient beings dressed in a synthesis of eternally long pieces of coolness. Beings who with a genderless form perform indecipherable movements reverberating an active philosophical faith and a hardcore collective spirit. That is the orthodoxy of human society.

What is notable, despite the identifiable dissimilitude to the other multitude of art stuff that despotically influences the void of human delittante, both in Europe and North America, is that Ziyi’s digital art proposal is made in an horizontal and networked style, rather than as a homogenous developing opportunity. By existing as a mediator, The Ultimate Samsara morphs between the presence of Chinese traditional culture and architecture, and the absence of identity. It serves as a condition to delve into the exploration by the global art matter on the homogeneous contradictory nature of utopias.

As a work of art, however, The Ultimate Samsara reflects on the effects of new(ish) digital technologies and the metaverse world, and re-thinks how all these technical platforms have in recent years impacted on the stuff that falls within the category of contemporary art branding.

London, July 2024

Rui Goncalves Cepeda