Liao Jiaming: Till Love Do Us Part

EVENT DESCRIPTION

RNH Space is proud to announce Till Love Do Us Part, a solo exhibition by Liao Jiaming. Using images of human body obtained from gay dating apps and cityscape photographed at cruising spots, Liao creates photo installations and prints. One’s feelings of angst, insecurity and doubts in finding love subtly permeate this body of works, whilst it questions the social norms that hold the reins to our understanding of ideality.

The exhibition title coins the wedding vows ‘till death do us part’, intending the marriage to last until death. To capture Liao’s feelings of defeated in his dating experience through apps and cruising spots, he twisted the phrase to communicate his disappointment. Such consequences are rooted in the failure of dating platforms in helping people find true love, whilst they nevertheless plant an illusional idea of ideal lover in the users’ heads, by distorting the notion of beauty and encouraging desire of bodily perfection. Liao seeks liberation from such a formula from the perspective of his own experience in the community.

Coming from a background of journalism, Liao gave up the idea of documenting news through photojournalism, but leaps into an alternate position as a photographer connecting to personal emotions in his artworks. To further repurpose the objective reality documented in photography, Liao trains artificial intelligence(AI) to analyse profile pictures found on dating apps then generate images of human body, parodying human behaviours in producing perfect images of their bodies abound by the aesthetic standards on those apps. These generated images, often surreal and bizzare, are a reflection of detrimental perception of beauty throughout dating scenes in gay community.

At RNH Space, installation work Eternal Home has the only part in the exhibition using AI generated image, in the form of wallpaper, acting as the backdrop to proclaim one’s social persona. The rest of the installation, on the other hand, applies honest details of human body to quotidian objects, to exemplify a sense of authenticity. Main Ornament I in the form of a muscular human body made from 3D printing, decorated by exquisite pearls, is a commemoration of the ‘uniform’ one wears in front of daily encounters. Liao’s interest in the real intimacy of human body unveils the masked emotions and the desire for truth, and paves the way for empowerment.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Liao Jiaming lives and works in Hong Kong. He obtained his BA in Journalism from Sun Yat-sen University in 2016, and his MFA in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong in 2019.

He is interested in human emotions, especially which evoked by social relation, and technology development. Making and manipulating images, he shuttles back and forth between the physical world and the virtual world, practising the course of beingness at the time. His work has been shortlisted in Awards including WMA Master, HK Human Rights Art Prize, etc.