Cao Gongming

Beneath the Surface is a photographic series that focuses on the idea of suppressed consciousness through a surrealist, dream-like approach that merges personal desires and the language of the familiar. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s social theory of panopticism, and its ideas of how surveillance regulates behaviour, it evokes an introspective gaze as a form of static resistance. Viewers are invited to slow down and re-examine themselves in these images, considering how they’re also shaped by surveillance.

Cao Gongming is a photographer and visual artist based between New York and Shanghai.