Mengzhi Cao – MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) – School of Fine Art

Mengzhi Cao(Annie) is a master’s student enrolled in the 1+1+1 joint programme between the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the Glasgow School of Art. At the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, she specialises in Art History and Theory. Her research focuses on cross-cultural exchange and global art history, with a particular interest in the integration and transformation of Chinoiserie across different national and artistic contexts. Her recent research examines the reception of Chinese export wallpaper in Britain. During her studies at the Glasgow School of Art, her research and curatorial practice focus on the relationship between artificial intelligence, digital media and contemporary art, exploring how technology influences human perception, imagination and ways of seeing. She aims to create exhibition spaces that are both poetic and critical, encouraging visitors to reconsider the evolving relationships between humans and technology, intelligent machines, and the world around us.

Curated by Mengzhi Cao(Annie)

Curatorial Statement

What happens when machines begin to see, interpret and tell stories about the world? How can technologies driven by artificial intelligence give rise to poetic possibilities?

Other Worlds: Poetry and Thoughts in the Age of AI is a two-day exhibition that brings together six artworks by four artists Xiye Lyu, Zijian Chen, Yixian Li and Jie Shuai to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping imagination, memory and everyday life. Through experimental moving-image works, AI art, digital media and interactive robotic installations, the exhibition approaches poetic imagination and critical reflection in the age of artificial intelligence from different perspectives. Step into a series of poetic and thought-provoking encounters that invite you to reconsider the relationship between humans, technology and the worlds we create together.

Jie Shuai explores the relationship between artificial intelligence and language generation. Her work invites visitors to participate in AI-assisted poetry creation, bringing together human input, machine-generated text, and an ever-growing stream of poetry into a continuously evolving “Poetry River.” Through this process, she examines how algorithmic generation and human experience can jointly shape new forms of poetic expression.

Yixian Li centres her work on the Tree of Life, combining the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with AI generative logic. By establishing a dialogue between technological rationality and ancient philosophical thought, he explores how technology can become a new poetic medium, while reconsidering the relationships between life, creativity, and existence.

Zijian Chen examines how artificial intelligence is transforming the ways we understand the world. The Four Last Things places four defining AI-related events—including the Hollywood strikes, congressional hearings, rivalries among technology leaders, and ambitions of extraterrestrial colonisation—within the religious framework of Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven, using irony to construct an apocalyptic mythology on the technological age. MAIGA Minute extends this vision into the near future, adopting the format of a news bulletin to imagine a society fully governed by AI agents. Beneath its humorous surface lies a profound concern for the future of human agency and subjectivity.

Xiye Lyu focuses on the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent systems. From 88778, which explores technological companionship and emotional response, to Adam, a post-virtual installation set within the ruins of a collapsed digital world, her works question whether response truly constitutes understanding, whether consciousness can be replicated, and how we might rethink what it means to be human in an era where the boundaries between humans and machines continue to dissolve.

Technology has become an inescapable part of contemporary life. The exhibition, therefore, does not attempt to return humanity to a world without technology, but instead seeks to reconsider how we might coexist with it. Inspired by Heidegger’s idea of “poetic dwelling”, the “poetic” here does not imply an escape from technology. Perhaps what truly deserves consideration in the age of artificial intelligence is whether, through coexistence with technology, we can re-establish our relationships with ourselves, technology and the world, and seek a form of “poetic dwelling” appropriate to our time.

When we look upon the land with a poetic gaze, it is no longer merely a reservoir of resources, but a dwelling that nourishes our being; when we live poetically, life is no longer an accumulation of toil and achievement, but a continual unfolding of meaning.

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