“Little dictators” is how artist Wang Zhiyuan sardonically describes today’s society—individuals absorbed in social media echo chambers, mimicking the egotistic puffery of populist politics and news media. Dictator Training Centre, presented at Passage Gallery in Haymarket, responds to this trend. A large brick wall features a spray-painted phone number that viewers can call to reach a hotline offering satirical advice.
This work is a new iteration of Wang’s 2005 piece, Teach Lie, first exhibited in Beijing. After moving to Australia post-1989 alongside a wave of Chinese artists engaging with Western democratic ideals, Wang returned to a rapidly shifting China. Unchecked economic growth and opportunism played out visually in the streets, where people spray-painted personal ads and business messages. Wang mimicked this aesthetic, offering a satirical school for lies via his own phone number.
His practice, shaped by context and experimentation, contrasts with whathe calls the at times “self-entertaining, highly niche closed loop of the art world.” Passage Gallery, a 24/7 exhibition space in a 1980s shopping mall wedged in the middle of bustling Chinatown, clearly shares Wang’s interest in accessibility and disruption. With Passage’s curators Ashleigh Jones-Fernandez, Marco Rinaldi, and Patrick Madden, Wang has developed a site-specific reimagining of the work—with an emphasis that this is not a singular artwork, but a participatory form that could have endless iterations and usages. “It is a platform that you can participate in,” he says. “It is a form of communication that exists because of the reality it is placed in.”
In an era of information excess and manipulation, Dictator Training Centre reminds us of contemporary art’s potential as an open-ended platform for reflection, dialogue, and shared authorship.
Wang Zhiyuan: Dictator Training Centre独裁者培训中心
Passage Gallery
Until 25 July
This article was originally published in the July/August 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Suggested Reading
Shelf Portraits: Critical Currents
In our ongoing series, Shelf Portraits, Art Guide writers recommend the books—recently published or deserving of more attention—that shed new light on an idea that has long simmered in the art world or has helped them see a familiar medium in a different light.
Jane O'Sullivan
Backyard Questions and Kitchen Table Answers: A Conversation with Stolon Press’s Simryn Gill
Peter Hill interviews Simryn Gill about the exhibition Stolon Press: Flat earth at Monash University Museum of Art.
Peter Hill
Shifting Frames: An evolution of self and place
In an Australian first, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presents Moving Landscape—an exhibition by internationally acclaimed US artist Sam Contis, curated alongside Dr Anna Arabindan-Kesson.
Art Guide Australia
The 2025 Archibald Prize finalists have been announced
The finalist portraits in the biggest Australian art award of the year have been announced, alongside the winner of The Packing Room Prize: Abdul Abdullah for his portrait of fellow artist Jason Phu.
Art Guide Australia
Wedgwood celebrates the ornate alongside the practical
An exhibition at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery pays tribute to Staffordshire-born Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and his eponymous pottery company, featuring rare, valuable and ornate pieces, as well as “grandma’s good china”.
Barnaby Smith
Book Preview: Speech Patterns by Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell
As I walk through the suburban streets, I find myself thinking about the publication Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández & Jon Campbell. It accompanied their two-person exhibition at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2022, which explored their shared preoccupations with class, identity and value systems.