LongSpace is pleased to present The Circle Line, a solo exhibition of visual works by artist Shuangqi Wu at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen, as part of the 2026 Shenzhen Art Week.
▲ Shuangqi Wu, The Circle Line, Generative Theatre: Digital Video [LED], 2025 ©双琦
The main exhibition space will feature Shuangqi's representative work, The Circle Line, presented as a panoramic installation.The Circle LineThe work offers a visual interpretation of W.B. Yeats's 'The Great Wheel,' depicting the profound difficulty of making free choices within historical cycles as humanity pursues the self-realisation of the body, intellect, emotion, and spirit. A second space will screen five short films:Future Crime，Tonguegazer，Paradise of Hell，Mortem FlosandGreenhouse Series - Uprooted. Similar to her previous works, these pieces explore the desires and sufferings experienced by individuals striving for freedom and wholeness. Shuangqi's work confronts the world with a sense of resolute determination, suggesting that anguish is an inevitable process on the path to self-perfection.
As an inter-media creator, Shuangqi Wu inhabits multiple identities. Beginning as a professional dancer, she uses somatic sensation as a guiding thread, employing digital engines as her primary creative tool within virtual, three-dimensional spaces. Compared with traditional moving image creation, her work possesses an ambiguous quality that dissolves the boundaries between the stylish and the serious, the popular and the niche. Theatre provides the fundamental structure for each of her pieces; like a director, she meticulously orchestrates every detail: character, dialogue, physical movement, stage positioning, and even props, lighting, and atmosphere. In a sense, the theatrical space functions like a form of psychological sandplay, a terrain upon which desire and the unconscious can be released. It is this psychological projection that endows these seemingly mechanical models with an 'embodied' aesthetic significance.
A further compensatory mechanism derives from the role of the 'choreographer': stark contrasts of light and shadow within the frame, abruptly illuminated sources, repetitive actions, and a colour palette grounded in black, white, and red. These elements centre on 'effect', striving for a sense of 'shock' that distinguishes her work from conventional moving image creation. This persistent 'interruption' does not seek to immerse the viewer in contemplation or a specific sensory atmosphere, but rather, through violent disruption and acceleration, reveals the fluidity and instability of desire.
▲Shuangqi Wu, Greenhouse Series -Paradise of Hell, Digital Video, 2025 ©双琦
It is perhaps on this desire-driven level that we can begin to perceive the true complexity of the posthuman condition: it is neither a predetermined historical project nor merely a blueprint conceived by ideas. Hence, the flickering and disjointed editing in Shuangqi's works suggests that we should not attempt to perceive through any unified or totalising perspective; beneath the surface continuity and placid landscape lies a turbulent and active core. It is precisely this drive of desire that makes on-site improvisation possible; it is the very limitations of the physical body that render virtual space so crucial: vaporisation, liquefaction, hybridisation, recombination... Within an atmosphere reminiscent of a suspense film, we finally confront this truth: we are not seeking to create a Frankenstein's monster; we are Frankenstein himself. Existence - that ungrounded fact - must manifest through matter; yet the very finitude of matter is precisely what obstructs the true realisation of desire.
▲Shuangqi Wu, Greenhouse Series -Uprooted, Digital Video, 2025 ©双琦
In Shuangqi's works, the theme of 'the attainment of desire' rehearses a future landscape. Therefore, her work should not be viewed merely as the editing or imagining of a particular scenario. The surrealist quality of her works is, in fact, realist - it requires no philosophical or intellectual intervention; perception alone suffices. This hellish vision depicts the lascivious pleasure of fulfilled desire and the distinctive hybridity and poetry of the post-historical phase.
展览｜深圳，海上世界文化艺术中心（L1-107空间）