Editor’s note: Themed on “Chasing the Light”, 2025 CAFA Graduation Season kicked off at CAFA Art Museum in early summer. Surrounded by diversified creations, visitors may find that some of graduates chose performance to burst their inner impulses, some chose to interact with the space to build their visual tension, and some got inspired from traditions to bring about more contemporary creative appearances. More young creators are paying their attention to drawing materials from the life around them, trying to capture the multiple realities of emotions, experiences and thoughts...
In these cases, the collisions between individual experience and the external world, between new and old media, as well as between virtual life and real life have repeatedly inspired their creativity that may not be perfect but fresh. CAFA graduates who believe in “light”, follow the light in their hearts and present their initial explorations of “what art is” that have been honed for several years at their degree shows. Featuring interviews with graduates at Phase B Undergraduate Students Exhibition, “CAFA Graduates Who Believe in ‘Light’”, invites graduates to talk about their creative stories from a more microscopic and in-depth perspective, and we would like to share and convey the “light” in the hearts of young people through these candid and vivid narrations.
Ailments
By Wang Bo, School of Experimental Art and Sci-Tech Art
I had always felt pretty healthy until a sudden tachycardia happened to me on August 15, 2021, during the period that the pandemic prevailed. Despite a thorough cardiac examination, the cause was not identified. The doctor believed that a combination of underlying health problems might have induced it, and he recommended me to have further investigation in a bigger city. Meanwhile, this experience had a huge mental and psychological impact on me. Eventually I was diagnosed with “panic disorder”, which might be the sequela of stress disorder caused by the strong stimulation in the rescue.
Ailments, Installation Video, 200cm× 300cm×350cm, Inkjet inventory on canvas, tin filing cabinet, acrylic medicine cabinet, television, notebook, traditional Chinese medicine, Western medicine, small auxiliary therapy equipment, video: “Ailments” 5′46", June 2025.
Screenshots of Ailments
For the first time, I realized that I might not be as healthy as I thought. I began to constantly reflect: what exactly is health? What are the unnoticed “ailments” of my body? Do I need intervention? At the same time, I repeatedly questioned myself: Do I really know my body? Are there any misconceptions about my perceptions, feelings, and experiences of my body? How do I relate to my body? That’s why I wanted to rediscover my body through this art creation.
“Ailments” consists of four parts, a document with a statistical list of medical information, a medical record cabinet, a medicine cabinet, and a video recording my creation. The guestbook was added later. It has now become an integral part of the work.
The statistical list of my medical information (a huge table on the wall): This 3.5-meter-high list contains a detailed count of all my key medical information, which conveys the feeling that examinations can be endless as long as I want.
Exhibition View of Ailments
My medical records cabinet (43 medical records): This cabinet, which I modified to be the original case folder trolley in hospital, contains 43 medical record documents. They did not only include the original medical information, but they also record my research notes, learning experiences, as well as thoughts and questions during the medical treatment. Like a mirror, it reflects the process that I have constantly reconstructed my own cognition.
Exhibition View of Ailments
My medicine cabinet (acrylic): Originally, I intended to carry out an “extreme” physical inquiry, trying to find all potential ailments.When the consultation involved about 20 departments, the accumulated amount of medicines was considerably impressive. That’s when I realized that medicine could be an important part of my work. Isn’t therapy also a way to know my body? When there are so many treatment options that make me feel dizzying, even the treatment itself can be questioned. In terms of display, I broke through the visual experience of conventional medicine cabinets and designed a red transparent cabinet that can be viewed from all sides, making it look like a monument from a distance. It corresponds to the missing comprehension of my body, but is this medicine cabinet really supposed to be a part of my body?
Video (looping documentary): Due to the strict prohibition of filming at the hospital, I have not obtained much footage. Therefore, the video focuses on my motivations, creative process, feelings, thoughts, and questions during all the consultations.
Exhibition View of Ailments
What has been constructed in my work is like an archive, a museum of the body and medicines, and a laboratory for the construction of body cognition. When visitors flip through the medical records, tiptoe to see the long list but cannot see clearly, and faced the medicine cabinet with the question, “Does a person really need to take so many medicines?”, they jointly form an immersive experience of my work.
Screenshot of Ailments
I went to 4 hospitals, visited 43 outpatient clinics, and examined a total of 211 items, with a rough count of 190 diagnoses. The most difficult part of the whole creation is not the intricacy of the schedule, nor the more than 20 tubes of blood that were drawn for several days in a row, but the process of “finding ailments”. I thought doctors would help me find these problems, but no, I need to take the initiative to find them by myself. It’s really a very hard job.
Wang Bo's medical records (details)
The choice of “Ailments”for the title is a very subtle pun in my consideration. On the one hand, it refers to the colloquial sentence “what’s wrong with you?”, on the other hand it originally meant to judge a horse’s health by observing the state of its hair in traditional Chines equinology—when the instrument does not detect a deep problem, the slightest change in the appearance may be the earliest warning sign. This is exactly the core of my whole project. What I have done is, in essence, a modern, almost paranoid version of “equinology” – except that the object is myself. I have taken use of the extremely sophisticated examination methods of modern medicine and tired to capture those “ailments” that are potential, undiagnosed, or only in a “sub-healthy” state in my body. Therefore, “Ailments” points out the absurdity of my behavior in the eyes of others, but it also metaphorizes the starting point of my desire to recognize my body through the most subtle examination.
Wang Bo's medicine cabinet
Comments on Ailments
Every time I saw “Chasing the Light”, the theme of 2025 CAFA Graduation Season, it always reminded me of my previous work themed on “The Third Explanation of Kua Fu’s Race with the Sun”. Out of dissatisfaction with the derogatory interpretation of “Kua Fu’s Race with the Sun”, I once chased the sun for a day in the desert of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to probe its significance.
Wang Bo's “The Third Explanation of Kua Fu’s Race with the Sun”
As a contemporary artist who has chased the sun in the Gobi of Jiuquan Gobi, the “light” I understand is rooted in the instinctive desire for the unknown in human beings. The scorching sand and the howling wind made me understand Kua Fu at that moment: he was not only chasing the distant sun, but also the infinite exploration of the “unreachable”. This exploration is the “light” of existence, measuring the distance between us and eternity. Today’s Kua Fu is still burning in the body of every dasher to the future.
Portrait of Wang Bo
Text and Image Courtesy of Wang Bo, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.
