http://www.straitstimes.com/Life%252...ry_134822.html
July 2, 2007
A dose of lies
By Adeline Chia
A SET of photographs said to be taken by a schizophrenic Singaporean photographer who later killed himself has been creating a stir on the Internet.
Some 100 people signed a petition, which has since been taken down, asking for the return of Wu Xiao Kang's last roll of film from a unnamed German institute.
It turns out that the institute does not exist, and neither does Wu.
A Singapore art collective called A Dose Of Light had made up the character and the petition as part of a 'conceptual artwork' to show viewers how schizophrenics see the world.
The 36 photographs will be shown at an exhibition called Out Of Focus, which opens at City Hall on Friday. The exhibition is part of Month Of Photography, organised by marketing communications company Phish Communications to promote photography as an art form.
The pictures supposedly came from the last roll of film Wu took, in the compound of the former View Road Hospital in Woodlands for the mentally ill.
But they were actually taken by members of the collective, comprising Robert Zhao, 24, a fine art student in London's Camberwell College of Arts, Angelique Pan, 28, a Berlin-based artist and Ang Song Nian, 24, a photography assistant at Nanyang Technological University.
They spun a tale on their website,
http://adoseoflight.com/overdose/xiaokang.html, about how Wu was a schizophrenic who killed himself in 2005 at the age of 26.
Zhao told Life! over the phone from London that it was the only way to let people experience how schizophrenics perceived the world.
He said: 'Some of us would like to believe that Xiao Kang is fiction and some of us relate to him like an old friend. How to get someone to believe and not believe in something at the same time? This was the best way.'
He added that the group decided to come clean because Silver Ribbon a group that promotes awareness of mental illness in Singapore, wanted to exhibit Wu's 'work'.
'To us it is a conceptual artwork, to them it's not.'
The collective told the group the truth yesterday and is awaiting a reply.
Photographer Tay Kay Chin, 41, who selected the pieces to be shown in the exhibition despite being aware of the hoax, said: 'It is a quiet mourning for someone, done tastefully. It was well put together and thought out.'
But some people who bought into the Wu Xiao Kang story were unimpressed.
Law student Tey Kian Siang, 24, said: 'I could see his suffering in the pictures. Now that I know he's fake, it seems quite pointless and distasteful. Don't they have anything better to do?'
But photographer Chris Yap, 38, thought otherwise. He said: 'It's not exploitative because the group gained nothing. They wanted to tell a story and it is well-told.'
Out Of Focus is on at City Hall from Friday to July 29. It is open from Tuesdays to Sundays, 11am to 6pm. Admission is free.
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