Antagonistic Superpositions showcases four artists of Chinese descent, each adept at revisiting, restaging, and reimagining personal and societal narratives. They boldly challenge patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist, and totalitarian frameworks, shaping alternative paths that diverge from a conventionally linear, unyielding timeline. By liberating themselves from historical silence, they illuminate alternative histories to envision new realities and ignite possible alternative futures.

Yasmine Anlan Huang’s project Servitude: do not believe that Google Map, crafts a speculative fiction inspired by an 18-year-old Siberian teenager who froze to death after attempting to use Google Maps to navigate icy terrain, challenging the trajectory of a cognitive capitalist future. The work explores the ways that both China and Russia have embraced capitalism in their post-Communist stage, and interrogates the legitimacy of the total embrace of digitisation and digital tools and how these are deployed by transnational corporations.

In Last Summer in 2019, Wing Ka Ho Jimmi engages with young asylum seekers in the UK who participated in the 2019 Hong Kong protests, resisting a government amendment to the Extradition Bill that could see citizens sent to China for trial. As the protests continued, the police responded with escalating violence, and the impact on young protesters during these events was substantial, with many experiencing tear gas exposure, physical assault, or arrest. Wing pays tribute to the protesters, whilst reflecting on how live streams and internet images were employed to report on the Hong Kong protests, raising awareness but also feeding misinformation.

You Liang and Willian Zou, both queer artists shaped by multicultural backgrounds, grapple with the complex interplay of personal and familial dynamics. Working deep in family archives and with residues of childhood trauma, they envision alternative narratives of past events to initiate conversations that might otherwise have gone unspoken. Bereft of language, a photograph relies on people to say things about it or for it. Zou’s series (Vice) Versa accentuates the ambiguous semantics of photography to address how the concealed can be brought into view, through what means and language, and what transpires once it is exposed. You Liang navigates her lesbian identity against the backdrop of conservative Chinese society. Rather than explicitly portraying queer experiences, Pale Spring Age is made up of intimate representations and manifestations of moments that sculpted her sense of self, unravelling the complex tapestry of her identity.