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Lawrence Lek is the creator of the Sinofuturist cinematic universe. He renders films, games, and immersive worlds where new societies emerge from the ruins of the present. From corrupted pop divas in AIDOL to confessional avatars in Guanyin, his works blend machine dreams with posthuman desire.
Lek is the recipient of the 2024 Frieze Artist Award and was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI.
Sinofuturism is an invisible movement, a spectre already embedded into a trillion industrial products, a billion individuals, and a million veiled narratives. It is a movement, not based on individuals, but on multiple overlapping flows — flows of populations, of products, and of processes. Because Sinofuturism has arisen without conscious intention or authorship, it is often mistaken for contemporary China. But it is not. It is a science fiction that already exists.
Sinofuturism (1839–2046 AD), video essay, 60m, 2016
In his ongoing fictional universe, begun in 2016 with his seminal video essay Sinofuturism (1839–2046 AD), Lek explores how the complex interplay between geopolitics and technology shapes a vision of the coming world that conflates China and its diaspora with artificial intelligence. In this and other works, the artist imagines how agency may be restored to the Other: a satellite in Geomancer (2017) wishes to become an artist, while AIDOL (2019) centers on the relationship between a fading pop star and an aspiring AI songwriter. Blurring geographical borders and the delineation between natural and artificial beings, Lek leads viewers to confront contradictions that humanity might face in the near future.
UCCA Exhibition Catalogue, 2021
