Alice Hu. Nexus Arts Gallery. 2 Apr 2024
Alice Hu’s remarkable installation at Nexus Gallery surrounds and contains the viewer — it’s as if you are inside an organic, evolving form. Hu’s complex and detailed installation exemplifies the Chinese concept of Hundun, which is described as:
“a state of ‘deep chaos’; an embryonic condition that is placed at the root of creation; a primordial state of ‘nothingness’ that is pregnant with endless possibility, where form and matter are undifferentiated yet teeming with energy. ”
Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat
Tree branches emerge from the white gallery walls which are mostly overpainted with a broad, sweeping gush of black, suggesting a cosmic void. Mounted on the walls are dozens of small objects such as glazed ceramic balls, some painted decoratively and others resembling eyeballs. There are tiny doll faces, some painted and resembling totems. Hanging from the tree branches are tiny plastic doll torsos and limbs and some ceramic facsimiles of these doll body parts. Hands emerge from the wall, and on opposite sides of the gallery there are two paintings showing a pair of hands making a cat’s cradle from wool.
Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat
In the catalogue essay accompanying Hu’s exhibition, writer Ena Grozdanić likens the assemblage to a fractal and notes how chaos generates the many kinds of fractal forms which are to be found in the physical world. Across the gallery space, forms and patterns are repeated with slight variations, just as in the real world, so that the concept of fractal growth becomes analogous to cosmic evolution.
Chaostopia, installation view, photo Yusuf Ali Hayat
The use of tree branches creates a visual pun — fractal forms branch in many directions as they grow, and tree branches thus exemplify chaotic growth. The dolls could be seen to represent the evolution of our society from its primordial origins in the cosmic chaos, and they remind us of the conceit that we humans represent the pinnacle of the evolution of life.
The overall effect of this playful but thought-provoking exhibition is to characterise a burst of evolutionary activity, with each of the objects symbolising the various ‘branches’ emerging from ongoing chaotic processes. The installation may be seen as a snapshot of this cosmic evolutionary process, which has brought us to the current state of the world. But we are informed that, in Taoist cosmology, the universe’s evolution is a cyclic process, suggesting that it is poised to continue developing in unexpected and unpredictable ways before returning to a primordial state.
Grozdanić suggests that what we see in the world around us is a combination of the unpredictable and the predetermined, and we might note how political, economic, and societal processes appear to result from the interaction of unpredictable and the predetermined influences.
Chaostopia may thus be seen as an allegory for the currently chaotic and unpredictable state of the world, which seems far from any commonly understood idea of utopia. Eyes and hands represent surveillance and control, and human society seems naturally predisposed to try to create order out of chaos. But, in so doing, society comes into conflict with itself, and we might also predict that the current cycle will bring a greater level of conflict and chaos in the future.
The reference to Taoist philosophy reminds us of the fundamental concept of wu wei, the principle of non-action or of refraining from intervening in the natural order of things.
Chris Reid
When: 28 Mar to 3 May
Where: Nexus Arts Gallery
More info: nexusarts.org.au
