Wang Tuo, based in Beijing, China, was initially trained in biology before shifting his focus to art. He has since developed a multifaceted practice that includes film, performance, drawing, and painting. Wang Tuo’s work intertwines Chinese historical references and archival materials with fiction and mythology to craft speculative narratives. His approach blends mediums and genres such as interviews, reality shows, and the theatre of the absurd, creating intricate, melodramatic stories that address the depths of collective unconsciousness and historical traumas.
Wang Tuo's most recent solo exhibition was held at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2021). His work has also been featured in notable group exhibitions, including M+ Museum in Hong Kong (2023), where he was awarded the Sigg Prize; Incheon Art Museum (Incheon, 2021); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Baden-Baden, 2019); Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, 2018); and Queens Museum (New York, 2017), among others. In 2024 he was awarded the K21 Global Art Award by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.
The Northeast Tetralogy
Smoke and Fire (2018)
Single channel 4K video, 31’ 18’’, colour, sound
Distorting Words (2019)
Three-channel 4K video, 24’ 38’’, colour, sound
Tungus (2021)
Two-channel 4K video, 66’, colour, sound
Wailing Requiem (2021)
Two-channel 4K video, 66’, colour, sound
Wang Tuo's Northeast Tetralogy explores the tumultuous, overlapping, lingering histories of Northeast China, where the artist's hometown, Changchun (长春), is located. In four interconnected works, the artist constructs a cinematic tapestry that connects historical events, myth, and contemporary realities. The Northeast Tetralogy offers a hauntology of China's journey towards modernity since the May Fourth Movement (1919), and challenges viewers to consider the country's complex transformation over the past century.
The tetralogy begins with Smoke and Fire (2018), where Wang Tuo introduces a migrant worker who exists simultaneously in two intertwined realities. In one reality, the worker inhabits a warehouse filled with movie props, where he “practices” legendary tales. In the other, the artist observes the worker's daily life in a Northeastern Chinese town. As the worker's story unfolds, so does a broader exploration of identity, trauma, and the complexities of individual and societal experiences.
Distorting Words (2019) expands upon the narrative established in the first installment. The three-channel installation merges disparate timelines and historical occurrences, from the May Fourth Movement to recent events, creating a complex and disorienting portrait of history. The film follows a protagonist trapped in a cycle of historical reincarnation, or a "Pan- shamanization," a concept introduced by the artist which implies that bodies can become vessels for past lives when they enter a trance-like state, especially during times of great societal change.
The third part, Tungus (2021), focuses on the Chinese Civil War and the siege of Changchun in 1948, a sensitive historical event for both the Communists and the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party).
Wailing Requiem (2021) is the final piece of the tetralogy, but chronologically the first. It delves into the life of the protagonist, the migrant worker who seeks revenge, and his connection with his roommate before the events of Smoke and Fire. Blurring the lines between past and present, the film intertwines the lives of ordinary people with the last emperor and other historical figures.
Wang Tuo has emerged as one of the most significant artists of his generation—a generation that came of age in a globalizing China, where traces of earlier truths and events sometimes exist only on the margins and under the surfaces. His films constantly confront these forgotten, sometimes forbidden histories using a visual arsenal as complex and forceful as the subject matter they depict. The Northeast Tetralogy is the defining work of Wang Tuo’s early career: in these four films, the breadth of his talent, the depth of his concern, and the clarity of his moral position become chillingly clear.
– Philip Tinari
The Northeast Tetralogy was selected by the Commissioning Committee and acquired through the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund. It will subsequently be donated to the Dutch state, becoming an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.