“Spectres in Heaven” brings together Liao Jiaming’s recent works across a range of artistic forms and methodologies, engaging themes such as artificial intelligence, queer culture, bodily discipline, and the histories of Hong Kong. The artist turns toward the unresolved fragments of the past, while also orienting toward indeterminate technological futures. Within this temporal disjunction, the works rearticulate bodily imaginaries that have been lost or remain unrealized.

At the center of the exhibition is the interactive game installation Be a Good Man (2026), which may be seen as a virtual microcosm of the exhibition as a whole. Continuing his recurring use of muscular virtual avatars, and drawing visual references from Buddhist mandalas and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, the artist constructs a highly corporeal otherworld. As players navigate through this space, they activate portals that lead into five chambers, gradually connecting bodily disciplines and experiences across different scales and temporal registers, from state governance and personal memory to online information systems.

The first chamber begins with anonymous archival footage of a Tiananmen military parade, tracing the highly politicized mobilization of bodies in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. The second shifts to an intimate register, recalling the artist’s own memories of school radio calisthenics. The third recreates the commodified body proliferating virally through Douyin fitness livestreams. The fourth echoes another work in the exhibition, featuring the artist repeatedly practicing the act of “finding balance” while drifting amid an excess of information. The fifth continues his dating-app series, guiding players toward an idealized new body generated by artificial intelligence.

Though numbered, these chambers resist narrative sequence. Players seem to drift through an eternal recurrence of bodily formation, layered endlessly atop one another without daylight. Collectivism appears here as a vast loop, yet one that also carves out shelter and imaginative space for hidden forms of being. Conversely, the self-realization and freedom promised by individualism may not necessarily provide an exit toward rebirth, but may instead merely be sugar-coated manifestations of capitalist logic. The artist’s longstanding focus on queer embodiment reflects on the frictions he encountered after transitioning from collective formation into a subsequent stage of life, a tension further articulated in IYKYK (2026).

Originally conceived as a performance, this work features the artist wearing his signature prosthetic muscle suit while simulating the scenario of e-commerce and influencer live-streaming, responding to the technological-capitalist forces that shape and manipulate him. When the viewing mechanism dependent upon virtual platforms is relocated into physical exhibition space, audiences are invited to participate in a bodily transformation process, physically reshaping the artist’s “ideal form” and leaving traces upon the silicone performance costume displayed in the exhibition. The title IYKYK (“if you know you know”), references internet slang used to describe content meaningful only to particular groups. As the boundaries between consumption, desirous spectatorship, and performative interaction become increasingly blurred, both artist and audience—as co-creators—are implicated in the production of contemporary bodily forms.

At a moment when corporeality can no longer be fully governed by either individual or collective will, “maintaining balance” becomes the posture the artist seeks and interrogates at this stage of his practice. Posture concerns the body, but is not limited to it; it also signifies one’s relationship to the world and the responsibility of engaging with it. The three-channel video How to Find Balance on Water (2025), inspired by Hong Kong’s Tanka boat-dweller culture, invites performers to simulate “how to find balance on water” at former harbor sites, while Hong Kong land-dwellers are asked to learn and sing Tang Tong Songs—songs traditionally performed by Tanka communities at weddings and funerals.

The sea and the harbor once coexisted intimately with everyday life in Hong Kong. Here, the artist overlays a disappearing past onto the visible present, summoning an imagined sense of belonging through the interweaving of bodily gestures and sung voices. This belonging is “imagined” not only because historical and cultural memory has become irretrievable amid urban development, but also because it gestures toward the contemporary migrants present in the video’s background—including the artist himself, also a migrant—whose relationship to Hong Kong is marked by simultaneous inclusion and exclusion. By moving from the established fact of landing back into the floating realm of fiction, the work attempts to loosen fixed identities and their corresponding bodily containers within social reality, leading viewers to seek their own balance amid states of weightlessness and instability.

At the exhibition’s entrance—and simultaneously its exit—hang two 3D holographic fans. This video installation, titled Unsatisfied Eroticism (2022–2026), appears from afar as an indistinct mass of flesh, but is in fact generated through artificial intelligence analysis of visual characteristics from two pornographic films. Stripped of explicit human contours, the work nevertheless exudes an even more diffuse carnality, pulsating and expanding as though alive.

The exhibition foregrounds a central concern: the irreducible tension between collectivity and individuality. Across the works, control and empowerment unfold in ambivalent relation. Through the artist’s lived trajectories and contradictions, these relations form an entangled yet misaligned network —one that generates questions rather than offering resolution.

The Chinese title, drawn from a Cantonese idiom meaning “you are both the god and the ghost,” carries connotations of capriciousness and deception. Here, however, it is recast as a condition of shifting positionality and strategic ambiguity that resists fixed identity.

Glowing devices scatter across the exhibition space. Bodies and avatars drift among them. As if breathing, spectres extend through this heaven into the fissures of time. The artist invites you into a game—but he is not the only one in control.

(Images courtesy of the artist.)

「神又係你，鬼又係你」嘗試整合廖家明近年來透過不同藝術類型與方法，橫跨人工智慧、酷兒文化、身體規訓、香港歷史等主題之共同創作關懷——藝術家站在當下此一交錯節點，往後回看未竟的歷史殘篇，往前望向未明的未來科技，從中探尋並重構那些已然佚失或尚未實現的肉身想像。

在此一框架下，本展浮現出一個更為核心的命題：集體性與個體性之間的多重辯證。前述的各個主題及相應作品，都隱含著「控制」與「賦權」的雙面刃，並經由藝術家個人的身分衝突與生命軌跡，串連起相互牽引的錯位關係，進而互為提問，而非解答。

展場中央的遊戲互動裝置《神又是你，鬼又是你》（2026），可視為本展的虛擬縮影。藝術家沿用其過往作品中常見的肌肉虛擬化身，並參考佛教曼陀羅與波希名畫《人間樂園》的視覺意象，打造出一個高度肉體化的異世界。玩家穿梭其間，可以藉由通道的觸發，再進入五間小室，逐步連結起國家治理、個人記憶、網路資訊等尺度與時間層次各異的身體規訓及經驗。

小室一以一段不知名的天安門閱兵檔案影像為引，追溯新中國成立之初高度政治化的身體動員；小室二轉以私密的口吻，緬懷起藝術家自身求學期間的廣播體操記憶；小室三則重現抖音運動直播間中，病毒式擴散的商品化身體；小室四呼應本展的另一件作品，藝術家現身並反覆練習著「保持平衡」，在過剩的資訊海中載浮載沉；小室五延續其「交友軟體」系列作品，引領玩家在人工智能的生成下，獲得一個理想化的嶄新肉身。

這些小室雖被編號，卻無敘事先後，玩家彷彿巡航於身體打造的永劫回歸,層層交疊,不見天日。集體主義在此看似構建出一巨大迴圈，卻也為自在隱身撐出了庇護與想像空間。反之，個人主義所承諾的自我實現與自由選擇，未必是通往新生的出口，亦可能只是資本邏輯的糖衣。藝術家對酷兒身體的長期關注，即在反思他從集體養成，蛻變至下一個人生階段後所遭遇的種種扞格，並進一步體現在本展的《永不落空》（2026）之中。

這件作品原為一場行為藝術演出，藝術家穿上其標誌性的仿生肌肉裝，模擬電商與網紅直播情境，以此回應科技資本對其的操控。當這一依附於虛擬平台的觀看機制，被轉移至實體空間時，觀眾受邀參與了一場身體改造工程，親手重塑著藝術家的「完美形體」，在本展展出的矽膠演出服上留下斑斑痕跡。該作英文名「IYKYK」（if you know you know）為網絡流行語，用以指稱僅對特定群體具意義的內容。

隨著消費行為、慾望凝視與演出互動的界線愈發模糊，你我，作為共同創作者，都被納入了當代身體形構的生產之中。

在肉身已難以完全由個體或集體意志主導之際，「保持平衡」在此成了藝術家現階段所追尋與提問的「姿態」。姿態關乎身體性，卻也不限於此，更是自身與世界的關係，承載著介入世界的責任。三頻道錄像《陸上行舟》（2025）受香港水上原居民疍家文化啟發，邀請表演者於昔日碼頭據點模擬「如何在水上保持平衡」，並邀請香港陸上居民學習、吟唱「歌堂歌」（原為疍家人於葬禮和婚禮上所唱）。

海與港，曾與香港生活相依共存。藝術家將消逝的過去與眼前的當下相重疊，並從身體姿態與吟唱歌聲的交織中，召喚想像的歸屬感。之所以是「想像」，除了因歷史與文化記憶隨城市發展進程已難回返，更隱隱指向影片背景中的當代移民，以及同為移居者的藝術家自身，與香港本土之間既融入又排除的矛盾關係。從著陸的既存事實，重新回到浮動的虛構想像，本作試圖鬆動現實社會中穩固的身分認同與相應的身體容器，引領觀者在失重動盪中，尋覓自身存在的平衡。

在展場的入口亦是出口處，高掛著兩件三維全息風扇。這件名為《暗湧》（2022-2026）的影像裝置，遠觀如一團難辨的肉塊，實則由人工智能分析兩部色情影片的圖像特徵所生成；褪去了具體而露骨的人體輪廓，卻更瀰漫著橫流的肉慾，彷彿有著生命一般持續張合。

由此出發，本展嘗試開展出慾望、技術與歷史的往返循環：從無以名狀的圖像、空殼般的肌肉表皮，經由虛擬空間中面目模糊的化身，走向具象且歷史性的肉身；在看似穩定成形之際，又可以重新回返起點、打掉重練——在去個體化與再物質化之間，身體始終處於不穩定且可持續生成、變形與重組的狀態。

「神又係你，鬼又係你」原帶有反覆無常的欺騙意味，在此成了藝術家逃脫認同陷阱、得以暫時安全降落的曖昧狀態，亦是可持續前進或後退的策略位置。在一個看似穩定，實為幽靈籠罩的天堂中，四散的發光體，遊蕩的肉身及化身，如同呼吸一般，向時間的縫隙延展，持續召喚不可化約的主體生成與集體感知。藝術家藉此向觀眾發出邀請：我想帶你進入一場遊戲，但我不是唯一的話事人。

（圖片由藝術家提供。）

11.4.2026 – 30.4.2026
12:00 – 19:00 (Wed to Sun 三至日)

Opening Reception | 開幕酒會
16:00 | 11.4.2026 (Sat 六)

Artist Sharing | 藝術家分享
16:00 | 25.4.2026 (Sat 六)

Curated by | 策展：Tung Yung-Wei 童詠瑋
Visual Design | 視覺設計：Zhang Riwen 張日雯
Venue Partner | 場地伙伴：Videotage 錄映太奇
Supported by | 資助: Hong Kong Arts Development Council 香港藝術發展局*

* The Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council. 香港藝術發展局支持藝術表達自由，本計劃內容並不反映本局意見。