Artist Highlight - Tingjiang Meng SKEY70

1. What Will Tomorrow Be Like brings together prehistoric jade references and pixel game imagery. What drew you to place these two visual languages beside one another?

 

I was drawn to a strange similarity between them: both emerge from different civilizations’ ways of constructing the world. Prehistoric jade objects once mediated relationships between humans, cosmology, power, and spirituality, while pixel games shaped the digital memories of my own generation. Although they seem distant from one another, both use highly simplified visual forms to carry complex experiences. By bringing them together, I want to explore how culture is preserved and translated, and how meaning is continuously reconstructed through technological change.

2. Jade carries a long cultural and historical weight. How do you approach such a charged material within a contemporary artwork?

Because of my background in jade carving, I am both familiar with jade and able to maintain a certain distance from it. I am not interested in simply inheriting traditional cultural narratives; instead, I am interested in whether jade can still “speak” today. In Chinese culture, jade often symbolizes order, value, and morality. What interests me is whether it can generate new meanings once those systems of value have changed. I see jade as an active material carrying time, history, and memory rather than as a decorative object.

3. The acrylic panels create a pixelated image, while the jade refers to ancient artefacts. How does this contrast between digital culture and ancient craft shape the work?

I do not see them as opposites, but rather as a temporal dislocation. Acrylic represents speed, replication, and industrial production, while jade suggests slowness, craftsmanship, and long-term preservation. When they are placed together, each reveals the limitations of the other: digital forms embodied in acrylic may be fragile and temporary, while ancient materials may lose their original meanings. I hope viewers recognize that the entertainment culture of today may one day be viewed in the same way we now view historical artefacts.

4. You describe the work as having a museum like display. What interested you in using the language of preservation, classification, or cultural value?

I have long been interested in the question of who decides what deserves to be preserved. Museums often appear objective, but they are also mechanisms for constructing value. Through classification, naming, and display, ordinary objects acquire cultural significance. By adopting an archival mode of presentation, I hope viewers become aware that our understanding of history is often shaped by the ways it is displayed. At the same time, I want to ask whether today’s digital culture may eventually enter some future museum.

5. The work reflects on entertainment, cultural discontinuity, and the loss of traditional Chinese culture. How does the idea of play become serious in this project?

For me, games are not merely entertainment but a form of generational experience. As someone who grew up in the digital age, games have shaped how we understand the world and have become an important part of memory and emotion. At the same time, rapidly changing entertainment culture often disconnects us from older traditions and experiences. I am interested in how we understand loss when culture is constantly being replaced, and whether seemingly light forms of entertainment also play a role in shaping our identities.

6. Your practice treats materials as active carriers of history rather than passive surfaces. How do Hetian jade and acrylic each speak within the work?

I see them as expressing two different temporal logics. Hetian jade represents deep time: slow, accumulative, and embedded with labor and cultural memory. Acrylic, by contrast, reflects the speed and reproducibility of industrial society. When they appear together, the materials themselves begin to enter into dialogue rather than simply serving as tools arranged by the artist. Through this conversation, they address how time is experienced and what is ultimately remembered.

7. The title What Will Tomorrow Be Like looks toward the future, while the work also reaches far into the past. How do you think about time within this piece? 

I think of time less as a linear progression and more as a cycle. The future does not necessarily mean progress; it can also involve repetition, forgetting, and return. By combining prehistoric jade references with pixel-game imagery, I create a sense of temporal dislocation in which the past can feel as unfamiliar as the future, and contemporary culture can quickly become a relic. The title therefore points toward both imagination and uncertainty, carrying a sense of anticipation as well as anxiety.

8. The panels appear delicate, precise, and almost archival. How important is this sense of careful arrangement to the way the work is read?

It is very important because the display itself is part of the work. I want the installation to resemble a collection of objects from a future archaeological site, creating a sense of future archaeology that makes familiar things appear strange. The precise arrangement produces a sense of authority and credibility, encouraging viewers to enter a mode of looking associated with historical artefacts. Yet when they realize the objects originate from game imagery, that logic is disrupted, prompting questions about how cultural value is constructed.

9. Within The Strange Everyday, your work makes the familiar visual language of games feel ancient, and ancient materials feel strangely contemporary. What do you hope viewers question about culture, memory, and continuity after seeing the work?

I hope viewers recognize that the things we take for granted are not stable. Games, entertainment, materials, and traditions are all constantly changing, and cultural continuity is never guaranteed. For me, the point is not nostalgia but reflection. When certain experiences gradually disappear, how do we rebuild our relationship with the past? And how might the things we value today be understood in the future?