DE SARTHE is pleased to present 1, its first solo exhibition for Hong Kong-based artist Ailsa Wong, featuring a mechanical sound installation, a body of moving sculptures, an interactive 3D video game, a 2D visual novel game, and mixed media works all situated within an immersive cave-like environment. A dimly lit chamber constructed to recall the interior of an ant nest, the exhibition explores the notion of existence within a unified body and considers techno-animism under the context of contemporary pantheism. Utilizing the archetypal ant colony as basis, the artist proposes a paradigm wherein all sentient beings – living, mechanical, or otherwise – are constituents to a single, all-encompassing entity. 1 opens on May 24th and runs through July 26th.

Ants operate as a superorganism, where the colony functions by instinct as a singular, self-organizing system. Each ant plays a specific role, such as foraging, defending, or caring for the young, all working in concert such that the colony may adapt, survive, and thrive as if it were one living organism. Across varied philosophies, similar ideas have been raised vis-à-vis the universe and all that it contains – seeing all living things as part of a unified whole, be that of a divinity, cosmic harmony, or simply the natural order. It is under this framework that Ailsa Wong asks: what if all objects, including those of technology, had souls? If we were to subscribe to techno-animism, how will we co-operate within an interconnected system?

Wong’s visual novel game Antigora (2025) embarks on a journey through a fictional religion of ants, the teachings of which are incrementally enlightened through a text-based narrative and static illustrations triggered through player interaction. Comprising a series of intuitively produced AI images, the myths and stories told therein are co-composed by Chat GPT and the artist. Just as individual ants act as different cells of a larger body, the player will continuously travel from one role to another within the game, as if all living creatures or objects have a shared consciousness. As the player goes through the varied chapters of interdependent tales, the broader picture is gradually revealed – achieving elucidation through the eyes not only of one, but of all.

Ant Mill (2025) is an interactive video game set in FPV, wherein players can wander around different rooms, each filled with 3D models of surreal daily objects and settings generated by Meshy AI. The artwork is titled after an observed phenomenon in which ants separated from their main foraging party lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle that often ends in death by exhaustion. In the game, players are provided with options of moving forward, backward, left, or right, as well as varied doors and tunnels that lead to seemingly different places. A pensive thought emerges as the illusion of choice and action is juxtaposed against the closed cycle of gameplay and the unreality of its environments. Wong reflects upon the contemporary systems of feedback that inform experience and contemplates behaviorism under the oblivion of larger paradigms.

A feeling of spirituality echoes through the cave, awakened by the singing bells of Wong’s sound installation Chant (2025). The installation is composed of brass bells that are strung together by braided hair that hang from the ceiling, as if a primitive musical relic made by an ancient culture. Each braid is suspended from a swinging mechanism programmed to move at certain time intervals, creating a resounding chime each time the bells are rattled. Wong draws inspiration from the sounds often associated with ritualistic processes, posing the artwork as a sacred object or totem within the fictional religion she has crafted. The artist interprets hair as an extension of the body and soul, while the bells are visually reminiscent of ant eggs, symbolizing new life and that as an extension of the life-giver. Anchored in viscera, the artwork evokes a state of physical unease that is contrasted by the lightness of its auditory experience. As viewers are led to confront their bodily discomfort, Wong’s fictional relic offers momentary transcendence.

A series of three sculptures, Wong’s Still (2025) are ant hill-like forms that each comprise an array of ticking clock hands. From afar, the movement of the hands looks as if ongoing activity in an ant colony, which operates perpetually and in monotony with no regards to the days and time passed. Imagining existence from the perspective of an animal, the artist reconsiders the notion of time as man-made construct irrelevant to other beings – wherein only the present can be perceived by inherent senses, and thus neither the past nor future exists under the context of empirical reality. By removing the clock dials, Wong also structures time as an infinite loop within the artwork, in which one’s sensory experiences serve as the only universal measuring unit.

Embryos (2025) is a mixed media collage of clay and an intense display of AI-generated images of embryos. In the making of this artwork, the artist casts artificial intelligence in a similar role as a queen ant within a colony. A queen ant produces all the ants within a colony, a single source of life from which the superorganism is born and sustained. In the artwork, Wong poses AI as the mother to dozens of digital babies, alluding to the technology’s growing role as a means of creation in the prevailing era. The artwork elucidates another similarity between the queen ant and AI, in that both are served and fed by its offspring – the former with food, and the latter with content and data. As one produces, it is simultaneously nourished, ultimately shaping a feedback loop driven and perpetuated by autonomous production.

Ailsa Wong’s mixed media artworks are paintings on found textiles and rusted metal plates, composed to mimic early artefacts. In prehistoric cave paintings, ancient humans incorporated the natural features of the wall into their depictions; the curve of a rock can become the leg of an antelope, a crack can be the antlers of a reindeer. The act of considering existing elements renders the artwork as part of its environment – released or birthed from the wall, rather than simply drawn atop it. Referencing this method of creation, the artist paints in response to textures or patterns of an existing piece of textile and continues to react as the image transforms. The interaction between Wong and the canvas forms a dialogue in which the artist and the object becomes co-creators of the artwork, manifesting in imagery that the artist believes to be the spirit of the found material.