YUQI WANG | ARTIST WEBSITE
Infinite Origin: Programmed Void
31 January to 1 March, 2026
chi K11 Art Museum
Shanghai, China
From 31 January to 1 March 2026, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai presents the solo exhibition Infinite Origin: Programmed Void by artist Yuqi Wang. The exhibition is curated by Yu Jiayue, with Zhou Wenbin, Co-Founder of DroidUp Robotics, serving as Tech Art Lead, and Dino Zhang as Academic Chair.
Through installation and moving image, Yuqi Wang constructs a series of interrelated models, juxtaposing structural systems such as I Ching hexagrams, genetic sequences, chess configurations, memory mechanisms, and bionic technologies. Within this framework, the exhibition examines how subjectivity is shaped under contemporary technological and cultural conditions, and further asks: when uncertainty becomes the norm, is the subject still willing to make choices?
Why Are We Set This Way, Yuqi Wang, 2026
Brushed aluminium, LED display modules, double-layer composite acrylic, UV industrial printing, stainless-steel structural fittings, mixed media, variable dimensions
Why Are We Set This Way (2026) consists of three installation units, forming an operational mechanism centred on the notion of 'programming' or 'settings'. Taking the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching as its point of departure, the work raises a fundamental question through divination: why are 'we', as a collective of humanity, and 'I', as an individual subject, configured in this way?
Here, fate is understood not as predetermination, but as a logic that continues to operate within given conditions. The hexagrams are presented in two forms: one comprises the Sheng and Feng hexagrams cast by the artist herself, suspended within aluminium profile structures as the starting point of inquiry; the other appears within interfaces constructed from transparent panels, where the contrast between human divination and algorithmic projection forms an observable decision-making model.
Why Are We Set This Way, Yuqi Wang, 2026
Brushed aluminium, LED display modules, double-layer composite acrylic, UV industrial printing, stainless-steel structural fittings, mixed media, variable dimensions
Running in parallel with the hexagrams in Why Are We Set This Way are scrolling sequences of raw genetic data. While the hexagrams offer a path for understanding prediction and change, the four nucleotide bases—A, T, C, and G—reveal, through scientific language, the 'initial configuration' inscribed into the subject at a biological level. When these two systems of encoding, drawn from distinct cultural frameworks, are brought into dialogue within the same operational structure, 'programming' is no longer understood as the endpoint of fatalism, but as a premise that must be confronted. In doing so, the work invites the subject to reconsider their position within these structures, and whether—and how—they might participate in their own process of becoming.
Simulacra Realms, Yuqi Wang & Zhou Wenbin, 2026
Humanoid Bionic Mechanism, Stainless Steel Structure, Mixed Materials, 185 × 45 × 55 cm
Simulacra Realms (2026) is a collaborative work by Yuqi Wang and Zhou Wenbin. Through a dynamic bionic entity installation, it constructs a perceptual field situated between the real and the simulated. Here, the body is dismantled into an interface for information, and life is reinterpreted as a structure that can be recorded, transmitted, and reassembled.
Rather than revealing the future potential of technology, Simulacra Realms responds to a reality already unfolding: when judgement is outsourced to algorithms and choices are quietly redistributed, is the subject losing the capacity to sense the world and to assume responsibility for decision-making? As the virtual increasingly overlays the real, what is being displaced may not be the human form itself, but the subject’s ability to participate in its own formation.
Infinite Origin: Programmed Void, Exhibition View, chi K11 Art Museum, 2026
The Emptiness of Here and Now, Concept Version by Yuqi Wang, 2026
The Emptiness of Here and Now (2026) unfolds through a non-linear moving-image structure, extending the exhibition into questions of time and consciousness. 'Here and now' no longer refers to a specific temporal or spatial coordinate, but becomes a liminal condition detached from the linear time of social narratives. When linear time temporarily fails and meaning has yet to emerge, the subject is compelled to remain within a blank space where the question of 'how to exist' has not yet been answered. The work treats this unanswered interval as a methodology in itself, reframing 'emptiness' not as the result of absence, but as a prerequisite for rethinking how time operates and how consciousness takes form.
Remains I: Memory Core, Yuqi Wang, 2026
Brushed aluminium alloy, printed circuit board (PCB), frosted acrylic, metal structural components, printed grid, 50 × 35 × 5 cm
Midgame, Yuqi Wang, 2026
Brushed aluminium alloy, aluminium composite panel, metal/resin composite materials, 50 × 50 × 87 cm
Remains I: Memory Core (2026) juxtaposes a failed computer motherboard with the R-pentomino from Conway’s Game of Life, transforming memory from a readable storage object into a process that may collapse at any moment, yet continues to operate within the remnants of its structure. Midgame (2026), meanwhile, identifies the chessboard as a liminal condition in which decisions have already been made, but outcomes have yet to appear. In this state, the subject can neither return to the beginning nor justify their choices through an eventual conclusion. Together, the two works point to the moment of systemic failure: when prediction ceases to function, choice is forced back onto the subject itself.
Infinite Origin: Programmed Void, Exhibition View, chi K11 Art Museum, 2026
Infinite Origin: Programmed Void does not attempt to provide definitive answers. Instead, it places viewers within a series of systems that remain operational yet continuously fail. When prediction no longer holds and paths cannot be pre-confirmed, the subject can no longer defer choice to outcomes, attribute responsibility to preset conditions, or outsource decisions to systems. It is precisely within this liminal state of failure that existence re-emerges as a process that must be assumed—and it is only within uncertainty that the meaning of choice can be re-established.