artLIVE – Jo Ngo’s solo exhibition, console.log(“bon voyage”); opens up a space between reality and illusion, where art, tarot, fairy tales, and artificial intelligence intertwine into a contemplative journey about connection, authenticity, and the human desire for intimacy.
The console.log(“bon voyage”); exhibition is not just a simple art show; it’s an opportunity for viewers to join Jo Ngo in reflecting on her entire creative journey, where personal contemplation converges with big questions about contemporary society.
In the digital age, as technology seeps into every corner of our lives, humans increasingly face a paradox: we yearn to connect, yet at the same time, we’re hesitant about the real presence of others. Social media platforms, messaging apps, and online communication tools were created to bridge distances, but now they are gradually becoming sophisticated ‘virtual companions’, capable of replacing direct interaction.
console.log("bon voyage"); exhibition.The result is a fragmented society, where each individual retreats into a sealed room or a self-constructed inner world for refuge. The feeling of connection is challenged by layers of screens, algorithms, and digital identities. In the face of this reality, the need for human bonds, which is a foundation of humanity, may continue to exist in a world where everyday conversations are being replaced by machine-suggested dialogue.
The material for a liminal world
Jo Ngo’s latest series of paintings was born in a unique context: the solitude of a semi-wild suburb, where overgrown weeds intertwine with luxurious but unfinished villas. This space creates a sense of suspension, half-real, half-dream, both reflecting the patchwork development of the city and evoking a stagnant world where past, present, and future overlap.
It is in this atmosphere that the liminal feeling—the concept of an ‘in-between’ space—is projected most clearly. People stand at a threshold, a place that is both familiar and strange, both safe and unsettling.
In this quietness, Jo Ngo turns to tarot, fairy tales, and technology as symbolic materials for connection and creation. Tarot with its mystical language linked to contemplation, fairy tales with their magical motifs and life lessons, and artificial intelligence—a contemporary tool—all blend to unlock new layers of meaning for the art. This is how the artist engages in dialogue with various cultural, spiritual, and technological layers, placing them within the same visual space.
The characters in the paintings constantly change their appearance, as if they carry different ‘versions’ of The Fool card from tarot. The Fool is the card that begins a journey, an innocent and excited figure stepping onto a new path with an open heart.
However, in Jo Ngo’s view, The Fool doesn’t stop at initial innocence; it also takes the form of a traveler who has been through trauma, soaked in encounters and losses. Ultimately, The Fool also becomes a symbol of spiritual growth, a soul brave enough not to deny the pain, but to choose to embrace and integrate all the broken pieces of itself.
These works are therefore both deeply personal and raise universal questions. Viewers can recognize their own reflection in the character’s image—sometimes as a person starting a new journey, sometimes as a person carrying injuries, and at times as a soul that has learned to accept.
The visual journey that Jo Ngo builds not only reflects a fragment of her personal life but is also an invitation to a shared experience, where pain, searching, and the desire for healing become the intersection between the artist and the audience.
Finding connection in the contemporary world
The console.log(“bon voyage”); exhibition doesn’t stop at being a simple art space; it acts as a liminal door, opening up a zone of intersection where the tangible reality and the virtual world intertwine, creating a space that is both familiar and strange.
As they enter, the audience doesn’t just look at paintings or light installations; they are also invited to listen, feel, and accompany stories that go beyond the canvas. There, every detail, every symbol, every character in the paintings is not simply an image, but also a reminder of the very experiences that exist in contemporary life, the fragile connections, the social anxieties, and the yearning to find empathy.
Perhaps, it is within this process that each person will find a piece of their own journey, a new perspective, or a personal answer to the question that constantly echoes about the nature of connection in the modern world, where technology and humanity both coexist and challenge each other.
Photo: The Art Deal
