SIYU ZHANG — Photography








operating guide

In modern society, shaped by Foucauldian mechanisms of discipline, intimate relationships are also subject to strict social expectations. This can be seen, for example, in the stigma surrounding singlehood in East Asian societies, as well as in critiques of the institution of marriage in Western contexts. Within such an environment, we are compelled to ask: does love emerge naturally, or has it become a form of emotional performance? Between love and loneliness, individual experience is often overlooked, while people are pushed towards standardised models of relationships.

This project brings together the colonial gaze of European “human zoos” in the 1890s and the absurd system of compulsory coupling depicted in the film The Lobster (2015). Through these references, it examines structures of power within contemporary systems of love, dating and marriage, while responding to Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity.

As individuals move between personal desires and social expectations, human relationships are increasingly shaped by social structures disguised through the language of algorithmic optimisation. This raises a further question: are we, in a different form, reproducing the same structures of observation, classification and control that once operated within the human zoo?





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