Ryan Kuo: Hateful Little Thing

Ryan Kuo’s online project Hateful Little Thing consists of text boxes that replicate and cover the pages of whitney.org, unfolding in a new sequence each time the work is launched. Conceived by the artist as a separate persona that expresses its frustrations without inhibition, the Hateful Little Thing inserts itself in the form of text snippets that overwrite the web pages and reflect Kuo’s encounters in online platforms, workplaces, and institutional settings.

Addressing the act of taking up “white space”—in the sense of both the white background of whitney.org and the structural whiteness of institutional power—the comments of the Hateful Little Thing highlight the complexities of hate, racism, and exclusion. The short texts allude to the erasures that take place in white space, talk back to the institution, engage its audience, and comment on the hypocrisies surrounding hatred, such as the insistence that hate has no place in society, even though it always existed.

Hateful Little Thing claims its rightful space by creating its own version of exhibition labels—typically used by museums to provide background information about artworks—alongside the other elements vying for the attention of visitors to whitney.org. The boxes are similar to the text label identifying the artist and title of Sunrise/Sunset projects, suggesting a reframing of the institutional text. The Hateful Little Thing makes its voice heard, demands attention, and refuses to leave, revealing experiences of having been misinterpreted, erased, or left out. With its insistent intrusions, it effectively manages to be both disruptive and poetic in exploring pressing issues of diversity and exclusion.