LuYang
PROJECT
LuYang’s Melbourne Arcade, 2026, is a major new interactive installation conceived as an expansive, site-specific arcade environment. Bringing together works from multiple game-based universes, the project immerses audiences in a dynamic, interconnected digital realm.
Retro-style arcade machines dispersed throughout the space offer visitors the chance to ride a motorbike in Uterus Man, play a Space Invaders-like game titled Cancer Baby, and battle it out with friends in Dance Dance Revolution, alongside other interactive elements that expand LuYang’s immersive universe.
The installation also includes two of Yang’s most ambitious video projects: Material World Knight, 2018–, and The Great Adventure of Material World, 2020. The latter includes a multi-level video game in which the audience follows an androgynous protagonist through a series of transformations as they encounter psychological and perceptual challenges.
Exploring ideas drawn from religion, philosophy, neuroscience and technology, Melbourne Arcade invites audiences to reflect on perception, reality and the shifting boundaries between human and virtual existence.
ABOUT
LuYang is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tokyo and Shanghai whose practice integrates advanced digital technologies, Buddhist philosophy, neuroscience and future-oriented cultural thought. Centred around the virtual avatar DOKU, Lu Yang creates immersive environments using computer-generated imagery, game engines, artificial intelligence and motion-capture technologies to explore consciousness, perception and the unstable boundaries between reality and simulation.
Rooted in the Madhyamaka tradition of Buddhist philosophy, LuYang’s work examines how identity, embodiment and existence emerge through interdependent conditions rather than fixed essence. By dissolving distinctions between self and other, life and death, and physical and virtual worlds, his installations invite audiences to experience reality as a dynamic and contingent process.
LuYang’s recent solo exhibitions have been held at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (France), Mudec, Milan (Italy), Kunsthalle Basel (Switzerland), PalaisPopulaire, Berlin (Germany), ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (Denmark), Kunstpalais Erlangen (Germany), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (US). He has participated in the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2022, and in major biennales and triennials internationally. Lu Yang received the BMW Art Journey award in 2019 and was named Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year in 2022.