(Translated from Italian)
At the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia, Lu Yang (Shanghai, 1984) transforms the brand's space into a wedding altar for his avatar. "DOKU The Illusion" ( until October 4 ), curated by Claire Staebler , is the fourth chapter in a series built around a digital alter ego that bears his face: an environment between waking and dreaming made of an LED screen, two Buddhas holding the wheel of life, and a mirrored ceiling that engulfs the visitor in the worlds evoked by Lu Yang's art. Between Shanghai and Tokyo, the artist explores depths where few dare to dive: the intersection of neuroscience, esoteric Buddhism, video game engines, manga, and otaku culture. His worlds use the grammar of machinima and worldbuilding to address questions that Asian thought has interrogated for centuries: the body as an impermanent assemblage, identity as an operational illusion, death as a transition. Since digitizing his face to create DOKU in 2020, the artist has been pushing the avatar toward a life of its own: he makes it die, reincarnate, multiply, until he recognizes it as a "Creator with its own autonomy." It's a gesture that speaks the language of Donna Haraway and James Bridle , of a posthuman who doesn't celebrate the machine but uses it to rethink what a subject, a species, a world is. The artist intersects the cosmotechnics of philosopher Yuk Hui with the themes of the end of human exceptionalism, the technological sublime, and coexistence with other intelligences.
