‘Leaderless’ by Isaac Chong Wai at Bilsart

Isaac Chong Wai's solo exhibition, titled "Leaderless," commissioned by Tarabya Cultural Academy and Zilberman will be presented at Bilsart in Istanbul from Jan. 6 until Feb. 1.

Wai is a Berlin-based artist from Hong Kong. Influenced by the personal and the global events, he engages in themes of collectivism and individualism, geopolitics, migration, historical trauma, identity politics and the public sphere. He was awarded the Fellowship at Tarabya Cultural Academy by the German Embassy and Goethe-Institut in Istanbul in 2020 and 2021.

His exhibition showcases a series of new works, including performance, video, print works, neon lights and installations, and a series of conversations named "Podiums."

"Leaderless" is an artistic political campaign that attempts to decentralize the representation of power on one individual and resists the violence of totalitarianism. By compiling and "rectifying" the gestures and postures that politicians perform to acquire power, Chong's latest performance, "Rehearsal of the Futures: Leaderless," (2020) envisions a future without a totalitarian leader and how it might impact spheres of collectivism, decentralization and altruism.

By remodeling the mechanism of political campaigns and questioning the perception of the leaders' bodies, the work rewrites the body by means of obscurity, reciprocity and transnationality. Performing a leaderless world, the exhibition reconciles viewers with powerlessness, unanswered demands, ignorance from authority and the denial of individual freedom.

Accompanying the performance, Chong has developed a body of work including several podiums segmented into parts; a neon sign that continuously transliterates the words "LEADERLESS" AND "LESSLEADER," a set of screens...