Order

This visually overwhelming installation of almost 45 square metres of
stainless-steel sheets is pocked with bullets that are still embedded in the
surface. The work was a collaboration between the artist and others who
assisted him in its production: Mao makes it clear that he did not
fire the gun. Order involved a long period of experimentation to ensure
that the bullets would lodge sufficiently deeply. The pristine steel sheets
are punctured, scarred and irrevocably altered by the actions of Mao’s
assistants, a silent reminder of unspeakable events. The shiny, reflective
surface, rippled by the violence enacted upon it, throws back a distorted
reflection of the audience. Like a gruesome funfair arcade mirror it shows
each viewer as a victim of gun violence.
Without overt polemics, Order evokes any and all forms of violence:
violence perpetrated by the state against its citizens, global threats
of terrorism and the horrors of war, and also the violence inflicted by
individuals against others in gun-owning cultures like the United States.
The ambiguous title can be interpreted in different ways; it may be
understood to refer to military orders or to a social order that continues
to accept violence as an inevitable aspect of the human condition. Mao
Tongqiang says, ‘In fact, we are all under a kind of order that is sustained
by violence.’