Down the Eye of Polyphemos (2024) is a 4-minute video installation that unfolds as a hypnotic, unsettling descent into cycles of vision, extraction, and violence. Presented on a circular screen, the work assembles a dense montage of moving images drawn from disparate sources, united by a recurring logic of circularity and penetration. Naturally occurring whirlpools, mosquitos piercing skin and filling with blood, solar flares, microscopic cells, and eggs being laid are intercut with man-made processes. We see factory production lines, tunnels filmed in motion, and the mechanised extraction of caviar from fish. Across scales, from the cellular to the cosmic, the work insists on a continuity between natural phenomena and systems of human intervention. The sound, composed by Anita Pan, is haunting and tense, enveloping the viewer in an atmospheric pulse that slowly asserts pressure. As the montage gathers momentum, the eye emerges as a dominant and unsettling motif. Retinal scans are graphic and high definition, archival footage of eyes, both animal and human, are subjected to experimentation in black and white film.

Vision, commonly associated with knowledge and mastery, is rendered fragile and violated. A slow, ambient violence permeates the work, less spectacular yet quietly relentless, implicating both the images and the act of looking itself. The work draws inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey, particularly the blinding of the cyclops Polyphemos, and from Un Chien Andalou, where the eye becomes a site of surreal rupture. Rather than direct quotation, Liao Wen channels these references to explore how violence operates through vision; how seeing, knowing, and desiring collapse into instinctual and libidinal drives. The work is closely tied to the artist’s sculptural practice, where carving, drilling, and grinding foreground subtle, everyday acts of harm embedded in material processes. As an installation, Down the Eye of Polyphemos is accompanied by objects such as a magnifying glass and volcanic rocks. The work extends beyond the screen, framing the video as both documentary evidence and physical ritual and ultimately, Down the Eye of Polyphemos confronts viewers with the ethics of observation, asking what it means to look, consume, and participate in cycles that quietly persist.