‘Dragonfly Eyes’

2019-08-22

Nine years after their last showcase of a giant phoenix installation work, Chinese artist Xu Bing and the Today Art Museum kicked off their second collaboration World Picture: Dragonfly Eyes at the museum on Sunday.

The core part of the exhibition is the 81-minute-long video Dragonfly Eyes. According to the artist, the video tells the story of two young people on a journey of self-discovery. Unlike other films, all the footage came from 11,000 hours of footage captured by public surveillance cameras. According to Xu, it took four years to edit the film together.

Xu said that he was inspired by a TV program about images captured from public CCTV cameras.

"I was told that the idea didn't make a sense for a film telling a story because it had no main characters," he recalled.

In 2015, staff at his studio discovered public surveillance cameras that could be accessed online. It was then that Xu knew it was time to start the project.

"It is a new art form to express ideas and thinking. Imitating a movie, the video aims to inspire people to think about themselves and what is real and what is virtual," he said.

In addition to art from Xu, the museum will also launch a series of lectures, seminars and workshops alongside the exhibition, which is scheduled to come to an end on October 24.

Global Times