THREE LIARS MAKE A TIGER

三人成虎
 

The "Three Men Make a Tiger" series of works is born from several layers of misinterpretations of text and images, including a piece of fake news and the literalization of a Chinese idiom. Several years ago, the artist came across a news story online about a foreign man seeking revenge for his girlfriend's accidental death by a zoo tiger. In the story, the man single-handedly entered the tiger enclosure to fight the tiger, ultimately ending in his own demise, dramatizing the news story. However, the images used in the news article were actually behind-the-scenes footage of American animal trainer Randy Miller. "Three Men Make a Tiger" itself tells a simple moral lesson: a repeated lie will become the truth. With the accompanying news illustrations, the artist literally deconstructs this idiom, which has a surreal cinematic quality, by unreasonably juxtaposing three men and a tiger on a beach at night, unfolding a scene that is part drama, part dance, and part struggle.