The Guangzhou Image Triennial 2025, titled 'The Case for Sensitivity,' has opened at the Guangdong Art Museum. The exhibition, featuring over 50 artists and artist groups, directly addresses a perceived crisis of technological mediation, arguing that digital existence deprives us of direct contact with the natural world. It aims to foster new forms of attention by emphasizing the materiality of images—what they are made of—over what they represent.
The Triennial matters as a significant institutional statement on contemporary image-making, positioning itself against purely digital mediation. By focusing on photography's physical origins and limitations, the exhibition critiques the medium's historical role and explores its potential for conveying deeper ecological and socio-political truths, such as colonial exploitation and environmental extraction, through material presence rather than transparent representation.