WeiXin Quek Chong | Object of Desire in Gerðarsafn Museum, Reykjavik

Object of Desire brings together collage, installation, sculpture and film by eightartists from Singapore and Iceland. The exhibition will travel between two institutions, Institute of Contemporary Art in Singapore and Gerðarsafn Museum. The works explore the affective agency of images and objects as ‘things’ which are desired, distributed and reproduced. The title of the exhibition refers to an essay by artist Hito Steyerl titled ‘A thing like you and me’ (2010). In her essay, Steyerl explains the role of humans in the formation and operation of images. According to Steyerl, our participation in images not only blurs distinctions between subjects and objects, but also human subjectivity, which is increasingly objectified. In her essay, Steyerl describes images as fragments of the real world; things ‘like any other—a thing like you and me’.