The fascination and anxieties surrounding AI are explored by Li Qi in his feature on artist Lawrence Lek. Focusing mainly on Lek’s two trilogies ‘Sinofuturism’ and ‘Smart City’, set respectively in virtual replicas of Singapore and Beijing, Qi coins the term ‘futuristic chinoiserie’ to compare the present moment of the global AI race with the fantastic visions of China that arose in post-Enlightenment Europe. As its historical counterpart, futuristic chinoiserie is a European imaginary, an orientalist projection in which past fascination has been replaced with fear and xenophobic sentiments. Yet, as Qi elaborates, in his being both outsider and insider, Lek (who is based in London and of Malaysian-Chinese descent) creates imaginaries that combine high-tech with Chinese traditions and Buddhist-Taoist paradigms – showing how technology is both enmeshed in global economic circuits and culturally coded through local beliefs and cosmologies.
Published on AFTERALL JOURNAL, Issue 58, October 2025. Read the full Forward by Adeena Mey on afterall.org.