Group Exhibition Jut Art Museum, Taipei
Photography, a manifestation of contemporary eyes, not only gazes at our civilization but also greatly illuminates our contemporary life.
Humankind is in an era of rapid progress, and human civilization is evolving, expanding, and mutating with an unimaginable force in this globalized world. The development and spread of images have rendered them part of our daily existence. Our ability to receive images is humbled by the sheer quantity and speed of their appearance before our eyes. No sooner did the camera shutter click, than a piece of the world was recorded in the picture. Photography is not so much a statement about the world as part of it, whether witnessed by our own eyes or viewed through photographic works. “Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy,” Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal book On Photography. Today, human civilization has fused with the fast-evolving medium of photography in an indisputable fashion and with an unprecedented degree of closeness to every dimension of our contemporary society.
Having toured seven cities since its debut at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea in 2018, Civilization: The Way We Live Now is hosted by the Jut Art Museum in 2024. This exhibition has been co-produced by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/New York/Paris/Lausanne, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea in collaboration with the Jut Art Museum, Taipei. The Jut Art Museum, as the first museum in Taiwan focusing on issues about the “future,” seeks to comprehensively explore human civilization through this exhibition, by bringing together works by artists from around the world; to wit, this exhibition documents and interprets the development of contemporary human civilization via photographic art. “Photography” is tantamount to a mirror that reflects every aspect of human civilization and our life. From dwelling and traveling as well as ways of production and consumption to working, entertainment, thinking, creation, cooperation, and conflict, all of them are the fruits of human collective endeavors that highlight the complexity and contradictions of contemporary civilization.
This exhibition uses photographic art as a reminder of the events that have already occurred in our century or are about to take place on this planet, in an attempt to prompt extra attention and broader discussion. We also expect this exhibition to stimulate the visitors to contemplate the future of human life and the world, and how our contemporary civilization will be presented in the foreseeable future.
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