Unconscious Hierarchy(2019), installation, 2019, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai 

Unconscious Hierarchy(2019), installation, 2019, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai

Unconscious Hierarchy, Caison Wang explored the human conditions from the homo sapiens to the present-day society, placing a found or made object representative of each stage of human development in nine see-through drawers. From the cannibalistic symbol of a human bone in drawer XI to a passage from the Diamond Sutra laser-engraved onto glass in drawer II, to the empty drawer I on the very top, the vertical progression showcases the material as well as the spiritual advancement of the human race. While the entire history remains visible and inspectable, the lower segments become less discernible as one looks through the top layers. The final part of the installation, the black Plexiglas with an “X” at a certain distance from the cabinet, symbolizes the unknown future and the uncertain past, both of which are placed in the same subconscious space. Miniature images of hybrid religious figures and robot faces are laser-engraved onto the plexiglass, subtly creating wallpaper-like patterns and slowly invading the virtual living environment.


Unconscious Hierarchy is the beginning of her reflection on the current-day living and religious situation faced by human beings. With a rigorous Soviet-style sculpting background, she has been experimenting with traditional crafting and digitally-generated aesthetics in religious figures. Against the backdrop of drastic changes in material condition and spiritual demand in the human society, she wonder if “belief” can be an effective manipulative tool, an everlasting power machine in our digital age, where the automatic operations are even changing the definition of “tools” and “machines” day by day?