Qiming Yang

What is ugliness? What is beauty? What is their relationship? Can they transform into each other? This visual research explores the above questions through pixelation, cropping, and extension in the context of vernacular visual culture in the streets of China.

“The beautiful and the ugly are not opposites, but aspects of the same thing.” (Bayley, 2013)

“The subject of ugliness is vast and unending, as it can modify anything, continually renegotiating views of itself.” (Henderson, 2015, p. 192)

Visual identity design for a group contemporary art exhibition curated by myself.

*Chroma Key, a staple technological process often utilised in digital post-production to replace the background using green backdrops – shifting reality, and cutting out subjects to a completely different context.

Using Chroma Key as a curatorial approach, a type of medium, and a working base, the exhibition raises questions on how and why technology has been deeply involved in the transformation of society. Thinking if Chroma Key reveals a process of how information has been coded and transformed in modern society, that inspires us to reconsider, review, and revisit the current technology-crowded world through its original form as a green screen that could be manipulated, edited, and controlled, and the various contents and contexts that could be chosen to tell narratives.

This exhibition as Chroma Key speaks from diverse perspectives behind the scenes, where the tension between technology and humankind could be explored through boundary, surveillance, authority, rights, class, and nature, questioning the positive ideology and mainstream narrative enforced on the public, and encouraging open discourse about issues related to de-skilling, devaluation, and dehumanisation in this era.

A curatorial proposal with curatorial rationale, contextual background, curatorial approach, artists and artworks, exhibition venue, space design, audience, and public event.