Open Your Eyes Underwater

Curated by Kexun Zhang

Artists: Jordan Deal, Nazanin Noroozi, Qiong Zhang, Shen Xin, Sunny Moxin Chen

December 7 - 19, 2022

Through paintings and sculptures, Sunny Moxin Chen explores the alienation of identity within the collision of different values. Qiong Zhang investigates China's pain and despair brought on by government policies in her performances, while Jordan Deal challenges the performative role of the body and identity as it adapts to different social spaces in That time I thought we were incubating together (2018). Combining computer graphics and elements from nature, Nazanin Noroozi questions collective memory and reflects on displacement in her multi-media works. Shen Xin explores the notion of ethnicity and belonging in their conversation with three guest artists.

Discussing around symptoms of social conditionings, they offer a sense of care and communion. Open Your Eyes Underwater intends to add to the conversation about political forms of exclusion and oppression and the alienation they bring. In this sense, to open one’s eyes underwater is a moment of discomfort and disorientation that leads to reorientation, to seeing clearly again. The exhibition seeks to bring lost political ideals back to the surface toward the possibilities of recognition and change.