Tianwen Dong is a communication practitioner currently based in London. She graduated with a Communication (BA) from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2020. Her work includes publication, moving image, video, performance and installation.
Tianwen is a highly sensitive person interested in emotions and relationships. Her multidisciplinary practice is based on deconstructionist philosophy and explores connected aspects of modernity.
Does intimacy fill the gap of our loneliness?
Everyone is lonely to some extent, which causes the rush to find someone else to love them. We call that intimacy. I seek intimacy in kinship, we kidnap each other in the name of love. I seek it in friendship, excessive expectations will ruin friendships. I seek it in sexual relationships, passionate love and stable emotions can't coexist.
Failed attempts lead me to a kind of nihilism. Boredom and loneliness killed me. Escape is useless. I fought against the absurdity of the world by chartering an emotional connection with my surroundings.
My practice focuses on examining the duality and dependence inherent in romantic relationships in relation to gender, identity, and the material world.
Love experience R Us!!
The fast-paced nature of modern life has led to a decrease in patience and attention spans, with young individuals increasingly turning to soap operas to satisfy their desire for romantic experiences.
To adapt to this trend, this speculative fictional candy brand compresses each romantic TV series into a single candy. By consuming this candy, it offers a convenient and accessible way to enjoy the rollercoaster of emotions that come with this type of drama.
The placebo effect, satisfying our customers' desires, stems from the belief that consuming our product will heal and bring happiness to their lives. By offering them a tantalizing blend of sweetness and storytelling, this brand aspires to become synonymous with love, enjoyment, and the ultimate treat for the senses.
*But please be aware of possible side effects caused by excessive consumption.
The work is a response to material found in the Tate Archives. It concerns a series of letters from Paul Nash to Eileen Agar dating from the time of their affair. Their relationship broke down due to Nash’s reaction to Agar having an affair with another man. In any form of love, possessiveness and prejudice are the key weapons to its destruction.
I recorded a conversation with an AI as part of my response to this romantic correspondence. AI is the representation
of absolute rationality, a stark contrast to the messiness of human relations. The work invites the audience to join in my conversation exploring love and intimacy with an AI. Through this work we can speculate on the future shape of sexual relations and possessiveness.
This set of postcards reveals the prejudice and ineffective communication within the intimate relationship of Paul Nash with Eileen Agar. The original love letters are superimposed with the interpretations of an AI, which expresses a distortion of information in relations.
Today, modern city dwellers’ lives are stifled. They shut themselves off internally, trapping themselves in spaces carved out of reinforced concrete, unwilling to step out. Through the deconstruction and reconstruction of architectural elements, I try to inspire people to rethink new possibilities in their relationship with the city.
