[쇼벨] "When Machines Care- hongkong artist Louise Wan’s Uncanny Kinetic Installations"
“Louise Wan, Hong Kong and London.” In a practice shaped by kinetic sculpture and installation, artist and artist Louise Wan explores the emotional and political undercurrents of labour, automation, and memory. Her works blend industrial materials, mechanical systems, and everyday objects to create pieces that move, repeat, and resonate—both physically and conceptually. Drawn to sculpture for its ability to merge movement, sound, and spatial presence, Wan sees three-dimensional work as a way to engage the viewer not just visually but bodily. Her kinetic sculptures often perform repetitive, futile gestures—machines that wipe, polish, or loop endlessly—questioning the illusion of progress in an increasingly automated world. Space plays a central role in her installations. Rather than treating it as a passive backdrop, Wan considers each environment as a co-author of meaning. The sound, vibration, and proximity of her works shift depending on the surrounding architecture, creating interactions that are at times harmonious, at other times quietly intrusive. These spatial relationships amplify the core tension in her work: the collision between intimacy and machinery.Wan’s installations frequently deal with scale and environment. Whether in intimate gallery rooms or derelict buildings, her works respond directly to the textures and histories of the spaces they inhabit. In the 2025 group exhibition Behind the Closed Doors at Safehouse1 in London, the site—a decaying Victorian house—became an integral part of the narrative. Its worn surfaces, hollow rooms, and traces of time echoed the artist’s themes of invisible labour and domestic repetition, particularly as passed down through generations of women.Q Your practice emphasizes sculpture and installation. What initially drew you to these mediums over more traditional forms like painting? I was drawn to sculpture and installation because they allow movement, sound, and physical presence to coexist, that something I couldn’t find in more traditional forms like painting. I’ve always been intrigued by kinetic and mechanical forms that allow objects to move, respond or repeat, as they feel alive and tangible. Q. How do you approach the physical relationship between your works and the spaces they inhabit? I always see space as an active participant in my work rather than just a backdrop. When installing a piece, I consider how its movement, sound, and material presence will interact with the surroundings; whether the work feels intrusive, harmonious, or quietly unsettling within that environment. Because many of my sculptures involve kinetic elements, I think carefully about proximity and the viewer’s physical position. I want audiences to sense the subtle vibrations, hear the mechanical rhythms, or even feel a transformation in the work. These spatial relationships help emphasise the tension between the intimate and the mechanical, making the installation itself part of the narrative rather than a neutral setting. Q . Many sculptors describe their process as a dialogue with materials. How do materials influence the way your ideas take shape? Metal is a material I often return to as it carries a sense of weight, endurance, and industrial history. Its rigid and reflective qualities allow me to evoke labour, pressure, and repetition. I sometimes use soft, pliable materials such as fabric to evoke intimacy and familiarity, contrasting them with rigid metal structures. This tension between softness and hardness, between human touch and mechanised form, reflects the contradictions between care and control, emotion and endurance. Alongside that, I frequently use readymade objects, as they embody the systems of mass production and consumption. From Fordist assembly lines to post-Fordist service economies, these manufactured commodities reveal the paradoxes of labour and desire within capitalist systems. My works often incorporate mechanical components such as motors or Arduinos to produce repetitive, looping gestures. These absurd machines materialise the postcapitalist paradox where automation’s promise of liberation instead perpetuates alienation. Through cycles of futile motion, I expose how both humans and machines become trapped in systems of productivity that mimic care yet only reproduce exhaustion. Q. In your installations, what role do scale and environment play in shaping the viewer’s experience? The scale of my works varies from piece to piece, and each size interacts differently with the theme and material. I see the audience’s encounter with the work as inherently unpredictable; each viewer brings their own experiences, interpretations, and ways of seeing. The way they connect with the work, whether through sound, motion, or material, is unique and cannot be prescribed. I often install in indoor settings, where the repetition, sound, and motion of the work can fully inhabit the environment. The combination of scale, motion, and environment creates a framework, but the actual engagement remains open and unique to each individual. Q How do you balance conceptual depth with the tactile, physical presence of your sculptures? My work always begins from a thought, a question, research, a tension, long before they find a physical form. The material and structure come later; they make the concept tangible, but I never want them to illustrate it too directly or literally. I’m interested in finding a sense of reality within falsehood, or what I think of as ‘displacement’, taking a familiar gesture and setting it elsewhere, where it begins to feel both real and unreal. In that space of contradiction, the work stays open, uncertain, but alive. For me, depth doesn’t come from adding more explanation, but from creating a sensory experience that allows the audience to feel the idea first. I want viewers to encounter the work physically, through sound, movement, or atmosphere. And afterwards begin to think about what it means. That gradual shift from sensing to thinking is where my sculptures find their voice. Q Could you share an example of a work where the installation space itself became integral to the meaning of the piece? One of the exhibitions where I showed my work, Behind the Closed Doors at Safehouse1 in London, resonated deeply with my work because the building itself has a history of transformation. Safehouse 1 is a crumbling Victorian-era house, and the way it has been brought back to life through creative effort mirrors the cycles of labour I explore in my pieces. In Collective Infection and All & 1, I look at the invisibility of labour within childhood, domestic life, and factory assembly lines, especially the work passed down through generations of women in my family. The space is served as a ‘silent witnesses’ that carry the weight of time, emotion, and unseen work. Its exposed walls, hollow rooms, and traces of decay amplify the themes of my work, creating a dialogue between the artworks and the building’s material memory. While inhabiting this space, the artworks converse with their history, turning nostalgia and dereliction into a reflection on the persistence, invisibility, and cyclical nature of labour under capitalism. ALL & 1, 2024 (Left) and Collective Infection, 2023 (Right) 31 May – 3 June, 2025 at Safehouse1, London Q What recurring themes or questions have emerged across your artistic journey so far? In the age of increasing automation, people often think that automated machines could reduce human workload and eliminate work, helping us to attain goals and productivity. However, the promise of progress is betrayed by a tendency towards stagnation. Technologies like self-check-out machines at cashiers and artificial intelligence- generated content often still depend on human labour to function correctly. In my practice, I explore these ideas through kinetic installations that engage in meaningless, repetitive actions; machines that wipe, polish, or clean without actually achieving anything. I challenge audience expectations about labour, automation, and productivity by presenting the illusion of efficiency without actual outcomes. These works enquire: Do automated systems truly make life easier, or do they entrap us in cycles of artificial necessity? Q. How do you see the role of sculpture evolving in a contemporary art world increasingly dominated by digital media? Digital media has been a strong influence on my practice, even when my work remains physical or kinetic. In one of the exhibitions I exhibited in, BIT-ROT, I engaged with ideas of fragility, decay, and obsolescence in digital systems, exploring how loops, glitches, and algorithmic drift create patterns of repetition and loss. Translating these digital behaviours into sculpture allowed me to materialise the invisible rhythms of technology, so viewers could experience them through movement, sound, and presence. I see digital media as informing sculpture by translating digital behaviours such as loop, decay, and instability into mechanical and physical forms. I aim to create works that feel alive, fragile, and contingent, echoing both the promises and failures of technological progress. i tried to remember but... 2025 BIT-ROT 7-10 August, 2025 at Copeland Gallery, London Q . What challenges do you encounter in translating abstract concepts into three- dimensional form? One challenge I often face is making sure my ideas aren’t expressed too literally. Sometimes the concept can feel too direct, leaving little room for the audience to think beyond what they immediately see. I try to find a balance, making the work neither too realistic nor too abstract. The aim is to let the concept exist subtly within the material and gesture, so that viewers can engage with it on different levels. Q Collaboration and dialogue often play a role in installation art. Have you worked with other artists, communities, or disciplines in your practice? Collaboration has always been an important part of my practice, especially during my studies at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. Working with others, whether artists from different disciplines or within group performances, constantly shifts how I think and make. Collaboration becomes a form of dialogue, where ideas are tested, shared, and transformed through collective effort. These experiences have taught me to listen and to adapt; to see my own practice not as isolated, but as part of a wider network of exchange. After each collaboration, I often find myself reflecting on what was learned and carrying those insights into my own practice. It’s a process that keeps me open, curious, and responsive to different ways of thinking and making. Q What emotions or states of mind do you hope your audiences take away from your sculptural works? I am interested in the different ways people respond to my work. Audiences often describe a mix of emotions, such as discomfort and fascination. For example, with MOUTHLESS, some have said they find it unsettling yet can’t stop watching. These varied reactions reflect the contradictions present in the work, including attraction and repulsion, pleasure and exhaustion, control and collapse. I find it meaningful when viewers notice something familiar yet distorted, or a moment that makes them question why they’re drawn to what feels uncomfortable. How each person engages emotionally, whether on a bodily or intellectual level, is unique, and I value the diversity of interpretations that emerge from the work. MOUTHLESS, 2024 Q Looking back, how has your practice changed or matured over the past five years outside Hong Kong? Over the past five years, my practice has evolved from exploring painting to engaging more with sculpture and mixed media. Since starting my undergraduate studies, I have experimented with a wide range of mediums, including performance, video, digital art, and sculpture, gradually discovering approaches that extend beyond the surface of a single form. At the moment, I continue to experiment across different mediums, though my practice is now primarily sculptural. Over time, the connections between concept, material, and installation have become more cohesive, allowing a dialogue to emerge between thought and physical presence. Q Are there particular sculptors, movements, or cultural influences that continue to resonate with you in your practice? Francis Alÿs has deeply influenced how I think about labour, repetition, and the poetic potential of futility. His works often begin with simple gestures, like walking, pushing, collecting, yet unfold into poetic reflections on human persistence and futility. I’m drawn to how he turns small, seemingly meaningless actions into something emotionally charged and politically resonant. In my own practice, Iike Alÿs, I’m interested in how repetition can become both poetic and painful; a way to question systems of productivity while revealing something vulnerable and human beneath them. His sensitivity to the everyday reminds me that even the smallest motion can hold an entire world of meaning. Q What directions or experiments are you currently exploring in your sculptures and installations? I’m currently exploring new directions with kinetic sculptures and installations that push the boundaries between control and chaos. I want to build systems that move on their own; looping, failing, or resisting. These works continue my interest in automation, exhaustion, and repetition, but I’m also beginning to look at tenderness within these mechanical gestures: how a machine might appear to care, to hesitate, or to tire. I’m experimenting more with transparency, sound, and rhythm; materials that expose rather than conceal the mechanism. I want the audience to witness the vulnerability inside the machine, to see labour not as performance, but as an emotional condition.
