Steven Xiao — Post BC
12 June, 2026 — 12 July 2026
Steven Xiao, Edible Subject, 2026
Post BC is an ongoing long-term photographic project and the first chapter of a planned trilogy examining contemporary civilization through shifting visual languages and narrative structures. Combining documentary photography, staged imagery, and fragmented forms of visual evidence, the project approaches contemporary society as a form of social archaeology and anthropological observation.
Rather than strictly separating fiction from reality, Post BC treats both as part of the same psychological and cultural landscape. What matters is not whether an image is discovered or constructed, but whether it reveals something fundamentally true about the conditions we live within.
The title Post BC literally refers to “post–Before Christ,” yet deliberately resists a singular definition. It may suggest a historical timeline, the aftermath of belief systems, the exhaustion of civilizations, or a world gradually losing its collective sense of meaning. The project exists within this ambiguity.
At its core, Post BC is concerned with repetition. Human beings continuously reproduce their desires, fears, systems, conflicts, and identities across generations. Although people often perceive themselves as autonomous individuals driven by free will, the patterns they repeatedly recreate throughout history suggest something far more cyclical. History changes in appearance, yet its underlying structures remain disturbingly familiar.
Many of the photographs carry a cinematic or surreal atmosphere while remaining deeply rooted in reality. Others appear documentary on the surface, yet contain an underlying sense of performance or fiction. This instability is intentional. In an image-saturated world, photography no longer functions as simple evidence; memory, reality, projection, and illusion increasingly collapse into one another.
Beauty also occupies a central role within the project. Rather than existing separately from violence, exhaustion, or decay, beauty is treated as part of reality itself — one of the few enduring qualities humanity continues to pursue despite its contradictions. While personal experiences inevitably shape the emotional atmosphere of the work, Post BC is not autobiographical in a direct sense. Individual lives appear instead as fragments of a broader social condition.
As the first chapter of a larger trilogy, Post BC begins with the psychological and cultural landscape of the contemporary world, before later moving toward direct conflict, ideological violence, war, and eventually the abandoned remnants left behind after human activity itself has faded. Across all three chapters, the project remains rooted in the same central question: whether humanity is truly moving forward, or simply repeating itself through different historical forms.
Catalogue
Install
Steven Xiao is a photographer whose work merges staged and documentary photography, crafting evocative narratives that explore identity, cultural symbolism, and social norms. Often focusing on the female form, he examines themes of desire, power, and representation. Trained in the U.S. and mentored by Taiwanese photographer Juan I-Jong, Xiao draws from humanistic documentary traditions while incorporating surreal, meticulously composed scenes. His use of dramatic lighting and carefully arranged elements blurs the line between reality and fiction, creating an atmosphere of mystery and tension. Through his striking visual storytelling, Xiao challenges conventional perspectives, prompting deeper reflections on contemporary life. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, earning recognition for its compelling synthesis of meaning and form.