Jiangyu Huang is an emerging media artist whose work, spanning video, installation and research-based practices, explores family structures, social mobility and class mechanisms. In so doing, he questions the economic systems and power dynamics that quietly rule our lives, dictating our geographic locations, routines, and even our most mundane habits.
His video work, ‘Symbolic Passage’ (2025), is a prime example of this approach. The piece stages a long-distance conversation between two young people calling from undefined locations, each standing inside bright green phone booths, a nod to the modern paradox of being connected yet increasingly isolated. When asked about how things are going, one of them, sharply dressed in a suit and a red tie, answers underwhelmingly: “Everything is very proper.” He then sits down at a long, strikingly empty table in the grand dining room of what looks like a royal residence, takes a sip of a cappuccino topped with a perfect latte art, and meekly takes in the wealthy surroundings. “Everything has been arranged, do you see how clean it is?” he continues, only to reveal how hollow and desolate he feels, adding, “Nobody ever comes to sit.”
On top of being lonely, he is acutely aware of being kept under surveillance; a haunting sensation that someone is “always watching” looms over his head, accompanied by the knowledge that he owns nothing in this space. There is no sense of belonging, nor any human or material connection that tethers him to this luxurious yet sterile reality. Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the phone is immersed in a natural landscape, dotted with symbols of youth and freedom: colourful balloons ascending into the sky, a windmill, and green fields through which they’re running.
In a hyper-consumeristic society where status is measured through money, professional achievement and social advancement, the artist asks us to consider how much of our sense of self is at stake in the quest for success, and what gets lost in the trade-off. While one of the two protagonists may have achieved luxury, comfort, order and reputation, his life lacks in intimacy, belonging, ownership; his existence is disciplined, surveilled and ever more estranged. By juxtaposing these two clashing scenarios in ‘Symbolic Passage’, Huang captures the inner conflict that modern life forces many of us to face: the pursuit of social mobility, career opportunities, freedom, against a more straightforward life lived in proximity to loved ones, familiar places, and one’s own personal history. And as it’s often the case with reality itself, the video offers no solution, or sublimation, just a careful, slightly sentimental, meditation on life, and what happens when the personal and the public intersect.
Written by Annalisa Giacinti
