Ritual of Subject

Xi Li 李曦:  Ritual of Subject - Overview, 2021

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Ritual of Subject is a multimedia installation commissioned by Artspace Aotearoa for Cruel Optimism: New Artists Show 2021. The work consists of four digital videos and a 3D-printed sculpture, exploring how desire participates in the formation of subjectivity and the experience of the self.

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Developed in dialogue with the exhibition theme Cruel Optimism, the work investigates the tension between desire and fulfilment within contemporary consumer culture. Rather than illustrating existing categories of desire, the project develops four symbolic manifestations of contemporary aspiration: fitness, sexuality, consumer symbolism, and idol worship.

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Informed by Jacques Lacan’s concept of objet petit a, the work develops its own symbolic and visual framework to examine how subjects become attached to images, objects, and fantasies that promise completion while sustaining a sense of absence. Through this structure, desire operates simultaneously as a force of attachment and an endless pursuit of fulfilment.

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Combining digital imagery, sculpture, mythology, and ritualistic symbolism, Ritual of Subject transforms contemporary forms of desire into a speculative cosmology. The work reflects on the psychological and cultural forces that shape subjectivity, where bodies, commodities, and idols become sites of devotion and projection within the fantasy structures of contemporary life.