Jingyao Huang, the multicultural background installation artist, has explored unconventional ways to depict cities through two thought-provoking projects: “A Swimming Tower in the Air” and “Chaotic Data Fences, Baraka, and the Cityscape.” Jingyao explores urban complexity, and the tension between illusion and reality. Her works redefine how we experience cities, bridging physical spaces, fleeting memories, and poetic abstraction.
In “A Swimming Tower in the Air”, Jingyao Huang captures the contrasting nature of New York City—a place of dazzling extremes. Inspired by a conversation with a friend, she reflected on the city’s striking two-sidedness: towering, glittering skyscrapers on one side and low-rise houses across the Brooklyn Bridge on the other. New York, in its essence, is a paradox—a combination of neighborhoods, cultures, and architectures that seem to contradict yet coexist seamlessly.
Jingyao connects this vision to the imagery in Li Bai’s classical Chinese poem”like a flying mirror, the Moon sets across the skies; at the river’s edge, a mirage of towering clouds arise.” The phrase poetically describes a mirage—something intangible, beautiful, and ever-changing. In Jingyao’s view, New York itself is a “modern American mirage”: a city where wealth and decline, luxury and modesty exist side by side. From government districts to Jewish neighborhoods, to normal houses near her home, the city reveals a fragmented, complex identity that feels simultaneously real and surreal—like a swimming tower in the air.
In “Chaotic Data Fences, Baraka, and the Cityscape”, Jingyao shifts focus to Guangzhou, her home city, and uses photo UV print on acrylic plastic and memory as her primary mediums. The project began unexpectedly when a memory card malfunctioned during a data transfer. Rather than discarding the error, Jingyao creatively captured screenshots of the glitches as they appeared on the computer and organized them. The resulting chaotic images became the foundation of her work. By documenting each frame of the data distortion, Jingyao transformed fragmented digital chaos into a meaningful and deliberate creative process.
Her design philosophy draws on the concept of the camera obscura but works in reverse. While traditional photography captures moments and flattens them into two-dimensional images, Jingyao turns this idea around. Instead of keeping things flat, she takes chaotic data—essentially broken-up digital memories—and transforms them into three-dimensional forms. Through her process, these “data fences” gradually become physical representations of urban shapes.
Jingyao Huang, as a creative and mature artist, invites us to see cities not just as physical places, but as layered with illusions, memories, and contradictions. These distorted and disordered works act as a metaphor for memory and the urban experience, reminding us that cities are not static; they are built from fleeting, often imperfect moments. Jingyao Huang challenges the traditional ways we see and represent cities. Her works go beyond simple installations—they reflect memory, perception, and the chaos of urban life. Through her innovative approach, she transforms the intangible into something tangible, encouraging us to rethink the cities we think we know.
