The Second Interrogation

“The Second Interrogation” is Wang Tuo’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The Second Interrogation, the titular work of the exhibition, is a two-part video installation based on the artist’s observations and reflections on cultural censorship in the art world in China in recent years. The first part of the work consists of a two-channel video, and the second part a single channel. The work stages the dramatic encounter of the fraught friendship between an artist and a censor, as well as the creeping tension in their exchanges. Together and in reversing roles, they ask fundamental and existential questions about the arts, testifying to the uncertainties they share about the purpose of art in society: what is the role of an artist in an authoritarian state? How could art bring about social change?