We, Land

Curated by Yuan (Sylvia) Zhi

Artists: Cecilia Kim, Okui Lala, Cena Lu, Ningxin Li, Ziyang Wu, Yiding Zhang, Daiqing Zhu

April 2021 

A city is a mirror beckoning us to consider its vast opacity—the complex lives behind endless concrete and stone, the constrained streets below towering vertices, the oceans of data transmitted through the Internet. Focusing on the word “we,” the exhibition We, Land brings together works by Cecilia Kim, Okui Lala, Cena Lu, Ningxin Li, Ziyang Wu, Yiding Zhang and Daiqing Zhu to explore hidden narratives of the city. How do personal influences shape our perceptions of place, and how do the places we occupy reflect our selves? And what is behind this reflection? Though the city continuously absorbs memories and redefines itself, it also mourns the impossibility of returning to an enchanted world that preceded it, whether as a secular expression of spiritual need, a nostalgia for absolutes or a longing for the Edenic unity of time and space before the city gained entry into history.