You never really know

In this strange new age of COVID-19, fake news has become an everyday expression, and a major part of any discourse around the media. Just as we can imagine coronavirus transmitted via droplets, so we can conceive of false advice being spread over the internet. COVID-19 made my hometown of Wuhan world famous. Wuhan is not only the centre of the epidemic but also the centre of rumours. Angary and frustrating, such emotions flooded my mind. I started thinking: why do rumours arise? How does it spread? Why can't we tell the difference? On the one hand, the development of the Internet has promoted the spread of rumors, creating an information epidemic or infodemic. On the other hand, we also lack the sense of discerning information. People have always been easily attracted to sensationalist disinformation and have been more active in spreading it. From this, I chose two main objects for my artwork, a mobile phone and a computer and made two versions in Chinese and English. Among them, the Chinese version is rumours that I experienced. I've collected a lot of news about COVID-19, using a collage format and plastering it all over them. There are true and false in news. It has been redesigned and uses a lot of collision colours. It means that the information is disguised to make it difficult to identify. Blue is used in the background to convey the emotional power of melancholy. The name is "you never really know." It aims to reflect on the truthfulness of information dissemination - that what you know is not necessarily the truth. In the face of rumours, we need to think independently, learn to question and distinguish. Besides, I hope that through this work, we will be able to look at rumours critically. Rumours are not necessarily purely bad or incorrect. On the contrary, they are additions to known facts. On this level, rumours are a way to encourage us to remain sceptical of available information and to criticize existing power structures and social relations. The creation of rumours may not solve the problem, but it can illustrate the problem and contribute to its solution.