Flattened World considers the minister’s box adopted by the British government and the nuclear control box indicative of the will of the American and Russian states and fabricates a briefcase that controls the world by using commonly used zinc plated steel sheets. On it are installed 198 name-plated switches, among them, 195 are United Nations approved sovereign states and 3 are yet to be named political bodies.

Liu Xinyi’s work presents a highly critical and original view on the logic of geopolitics: a silent logic that mercilessly controls our lives, habits and emotions from the macroscopic to the microscopic levels and defines our position in this world. Flattened World is a model of the civilised world, a world that has degenerated into a nameless landscape controlled by a powerful mechanical entity. The lands, nations and peoples of the world have one by one been consigned to oblivion, with the infliction of suffering decided by someone through the execution of mathematical formulae. This is a game that can define the nature of our present and of our future. In this game, the concept of the individual is obliterated, and the logic of power is placed above all else. Curator Manuela Lietti commented that Liu Xinyi’s work “often displays a rather unexpected double nature, undermining the viewer’s certainty about reality, its perception, and the mechanisms underlying the cognitive processes that regulate it. The landscapes in his work are often territories marked by their geo-political importance and strategic place within the global world, and presented with a certain amount of irony and, at times, cynicism. ”

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)