Min Wong

Inner workout

Drawing on multiple reference points including 1970’s countercultures, New Age practices and complexities of post-modern spirituality, Inner workout is an installation that offers a space for intuition, rituals and meditation. This installation examines metaphysical and cultural esoterica of the recent past, ‘New Age’ spirituality and recent renewed interest towards self-help and therapeutic culture. The work uses strategies of appropriation, hybridity and nomadic meanings that are contingent and subject to the contemporary dilemma of spirituality.

Inner Workout borrows visual symbols from ‘energy medicine’ such as crystal healing, chakra balancing and elements of my astrological chart. These culturally appropriated talismans examine the transactional relationship between humans and nature to probe the neoliberalist ethos that commodifies our interactions with the natural world and its elements. The exhibition also asks viewers to re-examine their assumptions about human connections with holistic practices, interconnected consciousness and a re-enchantment with nature as a basis for an alternative narrative of the present.

The brass and metal sculpture Fool’s gold recall shapes and forms from modernist interiors and houses intimate mediative mementos such as personal totems and objects such as crystals and books. In materiality and form, this sculpture adopts commodification, branding and interior design strategies to reimagine the visual language of post-modern spirituality. In doing so, it hybridises iconography to combine symbols of consumerism and spirituality, for example transforming the I-Ching water sign with the Adidas three stripes logo.

Woo woo is the meditative portal (curtain) that envelopes the Ideas Platform, creating an intimate representation of the internal. On the curtain are symbols that have been reimagined to represent my own language and relationship to the ambiguities of contemporary spirituality. The following quote from the Global Wellness Summit Report, The Future of Wellness 2020, is representative of the interrelated relationship between New Age spirituality and late capital consumption: ‘Energy medicine is at a pivotal moment, with the medical world and “ancient wellness” finding some common—at least in principle—theoretical ground. Common ground leads to new conversations and solutions. “Energy futures” in health and wellness: a very strong “buy.”’ Inner Workout seeks to recognise this global moment of ‘energy futures’ by responding to the imagery, tropes and politics of esoteric thought, self-care and spirituality.