Difference in Common

If defending the differences that exist among human beings is not yet a thing of the past, then we must defend difference.

Birth, cognition, physique, height, strength, age, personality, emotion, illness, appearance, talent, ability, gender, lifespan, memory, family, era, language, perception, creativity, belief, desire, imagination, empathy… occupation, wealth, status, class, power, prestige, land, energy, security, technology, nation, climate, cultural capital, the capacity to dominate others… These are terms utterly familiar to modern people, yet the realities they signify have perhaps never been identical. All innate natural differences and socially produced differences create a fact we can scarcely overlook: they nearly always precede individual choice.

The pursuit of fairness is evidently a fundamental principle of human society. Yet fairness has never been a naturally given state; it is always a “result” forged through countless struggles and safeguards. Difference, then, is the “condition” of reality. For this very reason, we can hardly rely on a mere moral imagination to examine fairness and the questions of difference that lie beneath it. It is difference that shapes individual destinies, that makes each person and each world truly what they are.

Understanding and coming to terms with the complexity of difference may thus be necessary. To this end, the exhibition invites nine public welfare organizations and eight contemporary artists. They work through radically different “artistic and activist” approaches. Faced with people and things in vastly different circumstances, how do artists and social organizations make their distinct judgments and take their distinct actions?