Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Art Gallery of Ballarat
40 Lydiard St N Ballarat Central, Victoria, Australia
August 24th – October 20th 2019
Liu Bolin / Camouflage examines Liu Bolin’s career over almost two decades; from his best-known Hiding in the City series initiated in 2005 until the present day. The exhibition aims to demonstrate how the artist’s strategy of camouflage has allowed him to produce images which resonate globally with viewers across time and place.
Staged and photographed in-situ Liu Bolin’s images depict meticulously painted human bodies – often his own – hiding in the surroundings of everyday spaces and places.
Through the feeling of connection that we share with the human bodies depicted, the viewer is invited to question how the dominant perspectives at play in everyday spaces and places shape our sense of self; feelings of pain, violence or loss, as part of a broader human search for mutual understanding and connectedness.
In this way the camouflaged body can be thought of as a vehicle for thinking and making change; a metaphor for the idea of ethical living, where freedom from domination, fulfillment of one’s own potential and the exercise of human rights, along with the call for simpler ways of being in the natural world, are at the heart of the artist’s struggle.