# @gordoncheung on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DYXTQo8AW1q
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/65871382-gordoncheung-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/b02347edca.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-05-15T15:18:59.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Gordon Cheung 張逸斌 (@gordoncheung) — https://gondola.cc/gordoncheung

## Caption

On May 14 2026, President Xi Jinping invoked the Thucydides Trap during the high stakes summit with President Trump in Beijing. As they discussed trade, technology, and superpower relations, my sculpture Thucydides Trap (2023) felt resonant.

This scholars rock was made from hundreds of layered Financial Times pages. Torn headlines of trade wars, stock surges, supply chain crises, and geopolitical rivalry are compressed into an ancient, jagged form. Every crease and fissure carries the ink of yesterday’s markets, now fossilized into new techno sublime mountains of deep time.

Drawing from classical Chinese scholars rocks or spirit stones that served as miniature mountains for contemplation I transformed the ephemeral scripture of global capitalism into a meditative object. Peach coloured FT sheets with their financial data and analysis forms the strata of the rock itself. Newsprint compresses the unthinkably complex matrix of  the information space into a motif of nature; a landscape of data.

The rock balances precariously atop a 3D printed white cloud base a smooth, billowing, fluid inversion of the form above. Where the rock is dark and heavy with information, the cloud is its serene negative, cradling, like mist holding up a mountain. This contrast captures the in-between tension of heaven and earth and carries the weight of capital, power, and history floating on insubstantial narratives, speculation, and diplomacy.

Titled after the ancient warning of conflict when a rising power challenges an established one, the work embodies that dynamic. By invoking the trap, Xi framed it as a call to avoid conflict through cooperation, yet the reference itself subtly positions America as the declining Empire that must adjust to China’s rise. Created in 2023, the piece now speaks directly to this present moment in Beijing.

This piece sits between ancient tradition and hyper modern finance, meditative calm and the brink of rupture. It asks: can we escape the trap, or are we destined to test its gravity?

#GordonCheung

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