Kexin Hong



Kexin Hong was born in China, lives and works in the Netherlands, as a multidisciplinary artist, she employs a variety of media including, video, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to explore political issues on digital platform and sociology.

Kexin Hong is fascinated by the boundaries between reality and virtuality, as well as the real and the imaginary; Her research delves into the impact of post-colonial trauma on the self- projection mechanisms among individuals in the post-truth era. It investigates how these self- projection mechanisms are manipulated by politically motivated power structures in the rapidly evolving landscape of technology, thereby constructing a multitude of projective realities. Kexin perceives these virtual realities as an ouroboros, perpetually self-referential, created based on our subjective emotions and deeply intertwined with collective social and cultural histories.
In other words, she intends to investigate how political images achieve a fictional “authenticity” while affirming themselves in reverse. 


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Whose craft crafting aircraft?
Deconstructed lcdTV screens/ plastic / indium tin oxide/ glass/ Aluminum
Semiconductor Chip *1
Projector*1
144cm”81cm



Grounded in Deleuze’s theory of the control society, Whose Craft Crafting Aircraft? constructs a digital media archaeological site that interrogates the interplay between digital aesthetics, technological power, and authenticity. 
The work challenges viewers to reconsider familiar digital forms and the ways in which transparency is transformed into a tool of manipulation in our media-saturated age.

The inclusion of a semiconductor chip—a critical component of modern digital infrastructure—further enriches the conceptual framework. 

Taiwan has the most advanced chip factory in the world (TSMC); in a period of political tension between China and Taiwan, a CGI team from China employs Minecraft as a medium to create a virtual aircraft carrier film. After the film published online, because of the illegible authenticity of the virtual material, the government successfully exploited this property for its own military-political propaganda purposes, and the apparatus of state power subliminally used this accurate rumor to incite some populists to construct new constitutional propaganda on virtual online platforms. 

Drawing inspiration from Minecraft’s iconic pixelated style, the installation deconstructs the cognitive violence inherent in the pixel matrix. While Minecraft’s 8-bit color blocks are celebrated for their distinctive clarity, their algorithmic proliferation exposes a paradox: what is promoted as “absolute clarity” becomes a cognitive filter that obscures reality. This notion resonates with Baudrillard’s assertion that “simulacra have swallowed up reality,” suggesting that the very medium designed to reveal truth may, in fact, conceal it. In this context, Minecraft transcends its identity as a game engine to embody a control device—each block acting both as a grid of data confinement and as a potential site of resistance against hegemonic power.

Whose Craft Crafting Aircraft? invites viewers to engage with these layered narratives and reflect on the dual nature of digital media—its ability to both reveal and obscure, to empower and control. By weaving together insights from digital aesthetics, material critique, and political semiology, the work challenges us to rethink the mechanisms by which modern technology shapes our perception of reality.