Huang Yong Ping, Empires: Monumenta 2016

This is catalogue was published on the occasion of an Huang Yong Ping's exhibition for Monumenta 2016 at Grand Palais, Paris. “Empire” is an installation especially developed for Monumenta. It forms a landscape, made up of eight mounds of freight containers, a metal snake suspended from a crane that unfurls like mist between mountains, and a bicorne hat set on an arch directly inspired by the one worn by Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau. The containers evoke globalization, as vehicles for the circulation of wealth. The bicorne evokes the endless power struggles that drive the world and all the industrialists, politicians, military men and tyrants who long to wear that famous hat. The snake slithering over the work, mouth wide open, appears to jeopardize the ambition of these powers, while the loop that it forms symbolizes the infinite nature of this cycle of glory and destruction.