Morphological Fantasies: Posthuman Embodiment in Tian Xiaolei’s Video Art

Abstract

This article explores the issue of posthuman embodiment envisioned in contemporary Chinese artist Tian Xiaolei’s (田晓磊) two representative videos: The Creation (Chuangzao “创造,” 2015) and Greatness (Weida “伟大,” 2017). Perceived and envisaged from an erotic perspective, The Creation reveals humans’ unrestrainable lust and desires for fusing with technology, while Greatness, by taking a different trajectory of remaking a Buddhist mandala, provides us with a set of religious symbolism and reconstructs the spiritual order of a posthuman future, thereby invoking an intriguing affinity between posthumanism and Buddhism with respect to a renewed conceptualization of the human. It argues that both works invite us to experience and ponder on, aesthetically and conceptually, the kaleidoscopic morphology of human corporeality in the posthuman condition.