Sun & Peng #artlust #contemporaryart

🏛🤖 "Old Folks Home" and the Inevitable Decline of Power
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s installation "Old Folks Home" features robotic elderly figures aimlessly wandering in a gallery—but the deeper meaning makes it even more unsettling.

📌 First Impression
👀 Visitors see elderly robots moving aimlessly, creating confusion about the artwork’s meaning.

📌 Adding Context—The Title ("Old Folks Home")
🏡 The title hints at aging, decline, and the struggles of growing old.

📌 Final Revelation—Who These Figures Represent
🎭 On closer inspection, the robots wear military uniforms, religious robes, and political attire.
🎭 They represent former world leaders, dictators, and powerful figures who once controlled governments.

📌 Possible Meanings
🔹 No matter how powerful you were, aging and death are inevitable.
🔹 The frailty of human power—once-commanding leaders now reduced to aimless, deteriorating figures.
🔹 A commentary on how some world leaders cling to authority despite physical or cognitive decline.

✨ Key Takeaway
Even the most powerful figures will one day become frail and forgotten. The installation forces viewers to confront the impermanence of power.

💬 What do you think? Does power truly fade, or do its effects outlive those who held it? Let’s discuss.

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Would you like insights into other thought-provoking political art installations? 🏛🤖

[carsonrietveld]

As an American, the aged arent leaving power.

[hewhoadds]

i think about how the worst people seem to never face consequences

also it reminds me of this realistic wax sculpture of a janitor that was installed in the cantor museum at stanford during the 00s in the modern and abstract art gallery

i loved that sculpture because it scared people, even tho the museum was donation only with free entry, people would fall silent or whisper suddenly when they saw this sad looking working man in the middle of the gallery
i still remember my first time seeing the sculpture as a child, and it opened the door to a lot of my investigations into class structure in our societies

[peterv]

After listening to everything you said, I wonder if the point is not about the aging of particular leaders but rather about the passing of old ideologies. Something akin to what the Dada guys were after, which was the dismantling of all the preexisting value sets.

[mudrooms]

It makes me think of how old age - the vulnerability and fragility of being old - tends to absolve people in power of the terrible things they've done in the past, just as it tends to temper the effect of any good they did for society.

Then it makes me think about how much value we place on youth when it comes to ability and competance. It can be hard to connect the dictator that killed millions, or the revolutionary that saved millions with the infirm, cuddly old person in front of us.

[MrMovieduck]

I've been in elderly housing for my work and its uncanny how realistic these sculptures are.

My read is that our elderly rulers are moving and pushing through lives of regular people without much of an understanding of what that causes. In a way as far removed as these sculptures are from the common folks that visit the gallery.

[MsMarmima]

Its one of those messages that used to give me hope for the future until I realized that terrible people still pass down evil through generations, either directly through their own teachings or by inspiring evil in others

[Yaoijoy]

They feel weirdly lonely the fact that they are not interacted with by their people the price of power that leads to being so alone at the end

[esmith]

This is a great example of experiencing and decoding art. Specifically, I thought: death comes for us all

[idrils]

I see it also as the way that people in power are actually more machines than humans - as they only stay in power if they obey by the underlying rules of power.

[merhona]

It has always astounded me that despots, and dictators always do horrifically inhuman acts and enact devastating rules causing so much pain, and death as if they will not age and die the same as the rest of us. They hold on to power to the bitter desperate end, leaving a hole for new horrors and despots. Makes you wonder what all the pain and desperation was about.

[Doubtlessly]

You just perfectly described why I love art

[JoanieBC]

This is brilliant! Brilliant.

No matter our social or economic status, we all grow old and infirm... if we're lucky.

[SabrlIna]

When you gave the final clue of the military it made me think of when people talk about “going back in time to when (Insert evil person) was a baby and ….” (You know how that sentence ends. The beginning and ends of our lives are so fragile and when even the most powerful cannot control their vulnerability.

[KatieBoyd-ef]

Or perhaps the great equalizer is the inevitability of our decline. Also. Old People Robots could be a great band name.

[Tolchuuk]

when u first introduced this i thought this is about age and being forgotten
but after you described it and i started to see how they are dressed i had 2 thoughts:
1. as you described: no matter how powerful or rich you are all end up the same
2. leaders are forgotten after they are no longer useful to us ...that they burn out fast and then left behind by society

[rwl]

Id be interested to see if some of the robots are programmed to be more "in the way" than others

[TC-croy]

One time in highschool i had to present something to a person, that at the time, i thought was very "high up and powerful" and as i was getting ready my teacher told me to remember this person put their pants on one leg at a time just like you. It always stuck with me. We are all just humans.

[anonx]

I saw this In The saatchi gallery, you could freely walk around the robots which was equipped with motion sensors so they wouldn’t run you over

[merren]

haha like the danse macabre but a step before

[wasserperson]

Without the historical/political/social power aspect,
it felt like an animatronic version of the machismo of minimalism,
I think because at least in the video, they seem more like "look how almost real I can make this"
than actually intended to be mistaken for real.

( and I think if the final layer was a different kind of meaning, say, "these are actual portraits of elders in the artist's local community, "
it still would've dispelled the bragadaccio feeling,
as long as the versimilotuse was in service of *something* beyond just showing off.

🤔🤔🤔