The Nightmare of Felice Beato, 2025

In 1860, during the Second Opium War launched by the British and French allied forces, photographer Felice Beato took the famous photograph After the Capture of the Taku Forts (1860). As scholar Claire Roberts has revealed in the book of Photography and China, Beato rearranged the positions of the corpses to achieve a perfect composition.

The artist reconstructs this war scene through staged settings but removed the corpses, leaving behind a ghostly scene. Beato had moved the bodies during the day to achieve his composition. The artist imagines such rationalized violence returning in the silence of nightmares: In unseen places, those who manufacture violent spectacles encounter violent recoiling.

费利斯·比托的噩梦，2025

1860年，在英法联军发动的第二次鸦片战争中，随军摄影师费利斯·比托（Felice Beato）拍摄了《大沽炮台被攻陷后》（After the Capture of the Taku Forts）这张著名的照片。在学者克莱尔·罗伯茨（Claire Roberts）《摄影与中国》（Photography and China）一书的考证中，比托为了达到画面的构图而重新摆放过尸体的位置，以获得“完美”的战争场景。艺术家使用置景的方式重构了这一战争画面，但是移除了尸体，只留下幽灵般的场景。费利斯·比托（Felice Beato）在白天为了构图而搬动尸体，艺术家试想这种理性暴力，到了夜晚会不会追扰到梦中：在无形之处，制造暴力的人，会遭遇暴力的反噬。