Time：July 29 – August 3, 2024

Location: The Blanc Gallery,

Famous 20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke once discussed the relationship between the barrenness of his own soul and artistic creation in a letter to his wife. He candidly admitted that a work of art is the result of being “in danger.” This fundamental stimulus, The Central Goad, resides long within the artist, conveying purpose and emotion, briefly and fleetingly attacking the latter’s soul. Therefore, Rilke referred to himself as an invisible bee, crazily plundering the tangible honey and storing it in a vast golden hive.

Exhibition View, 2024

Visual artist Si Tong currently resides in New York City. In her works, she has consistently adhered to the concept of creating in a state of “being in danger,” attempting to find a territory for her emotional spectrum in the midst of chaotic and noisy life. In the majority of her works, she combines cross-space theory with psychoanalytic methodology, focusing on the refinement of things that are often difficult to notice yet omnipresent in daily life – foggy grasslands, snakes, cigarettes… Most of them are presented from symmetrical and orderly angles and compositions. Imagine how to extract the audience and emotions from a segment of imagery.

American scholar Yi-fu Tuan once explored the difference between space and place in his book. Geographical space, in its physical sense, becomes a place due to the traces of people’s daily production and life, as well as the emotional dependencies hidden and emanating through their movements. In spatial studies, individual and collective psyches under the spatial perspective hold significant importance. Through the medium of photography, artist Si Tong explores the infinite subtle differences that stretch across place and space, deconstructing the traditional meanings of space. When viewing her works, various emotions unfold slowly like a rolled scroll before the viewer. The artist achieves a presence of “being there” in the field, integrating her emotions and philosophy into the narrative system as part of the image frame.

Exhibition View, 2024

“They stem from my own experiences with depression, telling the complexity of our traumas, narrowing the scope of connection and gaze between the self and the ‘other’…” During an interview, Si Tong expressed her creative purpose for her artworks. A remarkable artist is often also a naturalist. They not only need to understand the relationships between images but also have a clear perception and identification of all creations on Earth, everything that currently exists. If all creations are likened to existing nouns, then the artist’s mission is to retell these nouns with individual sensory experiences. Therefore, there exists a linear compassion between the two, which is akin to the intertextual connection that Si Tong maintains with her work. 

In “Thus They Spoke,” the artist explores and recalls various violence she has experienced in the past, transforming them into a stream of consciousness through fragmented memories in imagery – walking barefoot on grass, a snake weaving through fingers… Using natural imagery as metaphors for intimate relationships and traumatic memories, the artist employs improvisational and non-stage performance methods to explore the traces of personal memory connection and “truth” both inside and outside the lens.

Exhibition View, 2024

In another visual piece, “The Hairy Space Odyssey,” the artist uses her own hair as a metaphorical medium to narrate her growth story through a voice-over. The title “Odyssey” is drawn from Homer’s “Epic Odyssey,” representing the journey of an adventurer. Through Barbie dolls, the artist constructs a parallel universe covertly delving into topics related to hair and feminism. Such is the nature of Si Tong’s work, which not only conveys a refined calmness of the object but also captivates the audience with the expressions of the self and trauma, time, space, and growth. As she describes, although most of her works come from personal experiences in daily life, like an alchemist, the artist transcends the individual ego in her works, turning towards a collective human memory – the so-called “personal is political.” By combining her experiential system with modern imaging techniques, the artist has created a clandestine thread where feelings, perceptions, and visions gradually intensify to achieve an emotional resonance between the object and the environment itself.

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Contact Person: Hanx
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Country: United States
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