The combination of documentary and dramatic modes is typical of Wang Tuo’s cinema-influenced video practice, which draws on history, mythology and fiction to examine unresolved collective traumas.

Wang Tuo’s The Second Interrogation 2023 is a video installation in two parts that hinges on interpretations of performances that took place during the era-defining 1989 exhibition ‘China/Avant-Garde’ at the National Art Museum of China. The work expresses Wang’s notion of ‘pan-Shamanism’ through the invocation of suppressed forces beneath the surface of the earth and historical ruptures that provide glimpses of other dimensions. Equal parts psychological thriller, dance piece and theoretical treatise, The Second Interrogation is a spectacularly staged consideration of the ethics of art and the dynamics of history.