Projects

Year: 2022
Type: Exhibition/Installation (Built)
Client: Model Behavior group exhibition curated by the Anyone Corporation.
Venue: The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, New York.
NEMESTUDIO project team: Neyran Turan, Douglas Lee.
Physical installation production: Evan Chiang, Joseph Hedaya, Jasper Townsend (Model Behavior exhibition team at The Cooper Union).

When Naked Kings All Gone is a 5’X5’ diorama that presents an imaginary scene in a model-like manner. The phrase “naked king” comes from the infamous Emperor's New Clothes tale. In the project, the term refers to the power figures of our current time who enjoy the worldly pleasures of industrial capitalism while willfully ignoring the alarming future of climate emergency. While displaying something between a large architectural drawing and a model, the diorama assembles a seemingly impossible optimistic future as a tableau vivant as if it already happened.

A large diorama stands on stud legs. The front of the diorama facing the street is an imaginary scene taking place sometime after the risks of climate emergency are gone, along with the illusory pleasures of its Naked Kings. Instead of mythical creatures such as unicorns, the carousels have cattle mounted on posts. Forests are recovering from clearing and deforestation due to previous intensive livestock mega farming and other industrial production.

The back of the diorama facing the exhibition space showcases a different scene in another time frame closer to our current moment. In this time frame, the physical model pieces included in the frontal part of the diorama are decomposed as props in a digital drawing. The sky is orange from the ongoing wildfires. The diorama pieces are on a model photoshoot. Naked Kings have not yet vanished, and that new future has not yet happened.