From 11th February to the 13th February 2022, Goldsmiths Confucius Institute for Dance and Performance hosted an exclusive 3-day exhibition exploring respiration in relation to the Chinese characters «呼吸 » hūxī.
After several years of a world pandemic, «呼吸 » hūxī – literally meaning ‘to breath’ – is a fitting theme for a time when the concept of respiration has shifted from a mere biological necessity into a form of meditation, escapism and even expression of tension.
The exhibition was the first of its kind hosted by the department and integrated ancient Chinese pictographic writing systems into contemporary artistic practices that reflected not only modern experiences but the human experience itself.
What is «呼吸 » Hūxī?
«呼吸 » hūxī signifies the experience of being simultaneously inside and outside the act of respiration, both shifts recalibrate the self, the other and the properties and subjects involved with them. Like a syntactical reinvention, «呼吸 » hūxī is a sonic entanglement. It is a call and response beckoned by ideological impulse and social sound that travels across disparate life forces.
‘Inhalation and exhalation are seen as opposites and equals at the same time, influxes and effluxes show how movements oscillate between porous extremities and radiating interiorities.’ – Jiaying Gao, Curator
Exploring 《呼吸》Respiration in Modern Artistic Practice
From physical installations, writings, paintings, sculptures and ceramics to digital experiences, live performances and interactive resources, the project examined the concept of influxes and effluxes in relation to the Chinese characters 《呼吸》 hūxī through different artistic mediums and investigated the importance of respiration in creative practice and the challenges of being resistant.
The project reflected a distinctly collaborative approach as contributing artists included Goldsmiths Art, Design, Computing and Theatre and Performance students as well as external students and professional artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Yet with many Chinese contributing artists, the department also provided a glimpse into contemporary Chinese culture. The interplay of works by Chinese, British and international artists gave an explorative insight into varying cultural interpretations of the significance of respiration in connection with traditional Chinese culture and its pictographic writing systems in a modern context.
Antiquity and Modernity Intertwine
Set within the imposing walls of Goldsmiths’ historic Great Hall, the institution’s symbolic centre is a Grade II listed building with colonial connections and an unlikely venue to accommodate an exploration into respiration in connection with the culture of an ethnic minority in the UK.
Yet the exhibition incorporated the very fabric of the building and its purpose into the artistic exhibited displays. From its plaster mouldings and arches to the pianos it houses, the hall’s grandeur is an ever-present reminder of the influxes and effluxes it has both witnessed within its walls and inflicted outside its walls, which ties these contemporary reflections of modern experiences to a historic past and acted as a perpetual reminder of respiratory experiences old and new. Every breath and act of «呼吸 » hūxī looks back to the past and forward to the future.
The carefully construed placement of artworks within the exhibition space allowed the different characteristics of each artwork to be fully stimulated. Although the internal respiratory system of each work differed, the overall expression was the exhibition’s own respiration. The same sense of breathing resonated between each piece, but at the same time confronted itself.
‘In the process of urbanization, the population of Gufang is becoming less and less and the ancient village is dying out. But people are still swimming and breathing happily in the water, keeping the village alive.’ – Xiaoli Liu
This photograph was taken when I was practicing Zhanzhuang (Tai Chi style standing meditation). Tai chi and qigong both require us to focus on breathing, body relaxation and finding inner peace.’ – Chengmei Liang, Goldsmiths Confucius
‘Our life exists between inhaling and exhaling. Our lives began with breathing and will end with its cessation. This shows how important breathing is.
The Chinese character “Xi息” means breathing or breath. Consisting of two words, 息Xi‘s upper half is “Zi自”———meaning oneself, and the lower half is “Xin 心” ———the heart.
The ancients said: “One inhalation and one exhalation make up one Xi(breath).” The Chinese character “Tiao 调” means adjustment and exercise.“Tiao Xi调息” means breathing regulation – inhalation and exhalation. When we practice Tai Chi and Qigong, we need to regulate our breathing “Tiao Xi 调息”. ‘ – Chengmei Liang
This image of Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Chinese Dance Teacher, Yiyun Li, as she practices the ancient art of Chinese Water Sleeve Dance – 水袖 shuǐxiù featured within the exhibition.
The ancient art of Water Sleeve Dance – incorporating silk extensions of garment sleeves – first appeared in Chinese Opera and theatre in the Ming Dynasty. The effect of the sleeves was said to appear like water rippling. Here, Yiyun gave a traditional art form a modern twist by practicing it in an underwater setting.
‘This photograph was taken when I was practicing underwater dance movement. It shows a moment when I cannot freely breath, which reminds me how important but easily overlooked breathing is.’ – Yiyun Li, Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Dance Teacher
‘When at rest, it is also a kind of inner breathing.’ – Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Dance Teacher, Jiaolong Ma
Performance Programme List
Flower & Life – Xuyang Su & Jane Gao (Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Dance Teacher)
Coherent – Song Qiao (Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Dance Teacher)
Counting – Freddie Churchill
Memory – Yiyun Li (Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Asian Contemporary Dance and Chinese Fan Dance Short Course Teacher)
Vow – Chengmei (Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Qigong and Tai Chi Short Course Teaher)
Qi – Jiaolong Ma (Goldsmiths Confucius Institute Chinese Classical Dance and Chinese Sword Dance Short Course Teacher)
Contributing Exhibitors:
Alicia Torres Simón
Anna-Lou Latham
AOI/Meng Xie
Chaoming Zheng
Duanqing Wang
Elisabetta Antonucci
Guadalupe Ferrandez Tari
Henryk Terpilowski
Hristo Yoradov
Irfaan Nahaz Masroor
Isobel Scott-Malden
Kaibing Zhang
Kyrin Chen and Vi Trinh
Masha Chelova
Nigel Bristow
Philip Kinshuck
Shaohan Tang
Qianru Zhang
Qidi/Didi Su
Qike Shi
Xuemei Huang
Zhiyu Lu (Lucy Meeber)
Zhiyuan Xue
Zoe Armit
Photo: Noshin Begum
Alicia Torres Simón
The pieces that I create are based on the field of sculpture and installation, solving questions of a spatial nature. The work investigates the chemical reaction produced by the mixture of gold leaf and acrylic resin, resulting in pieces that are characterised by their transparency, malleability, blue and green tones. Therefore, it allows me to vary their shape to adapt them to the space where they are exhibited, sometimes outdoors where they wave together with the architecture in a practice that converges both aesthetic languages.
The installation of those pieces aim to generate an immersive experience that makes the spectator re-think about the concept of field and its spatiality through the experience of feeling the movement and sound. The resin and its liquidity creates a rhythm in the space to feel involved in the track of a plastic-environment. It is a practice of coexisting and dealing with the dialogue generated between pieces, space and spectator.
https://www.instagram.com/aliciatorres___/
Anna-Lou Latham
Anna-Lou Latham explores experience through the poetic word, vocal dispositions as well as drawing and visual mediums. Anna is studying with the Department of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.
‘limb – o (the lie of hope): Poem, 2022. Vocal disposition: Soundscape with poetry and drawing, 2022.titan 0: soundscape and film, 2021 Dimensions variable
https://soundcloud.com/anna-latham-1
AOI/Meng Xie
Artist, singer, telecommunication engineer, former science student, anime lover, and a lot more… … Meng loves to explore different genres of all categories of art rather than only one.
It’s always hard for me to say what’s my favorite art or my favorite song. Keep calm and be curious.
Exchange 1.0 Digital graphic art. 2021
This piece originated from one of my ideas for an installation work, which couldn’t be realized yet. It aims to talk about the relationship between person to person through breathing in and out the substances in this world, especially in this pandemic situation. As humans, we have Carbon based lives, we are exchanging substances like carbon and other elements in and out of our bodies, and through those we become a part of each other, and so to spread disease in worse case. as a pandemic special version, one of the head is covered by mask. So to show how aggressive the air flow is without a mask and how the mask can protect us. the 2 heads actually are at same distance on the left and right, but you will see the red one more aggressive by it’s color and how far the air flows, and the whole image feels unbalanced.
https://www.instagram.com/welkin_aoi/
Chaoming Zheng
Chaoming Zheng (Sadie) is an artist based in Shanghai and London. She received a BA in English Literature from Fudan University and is currently studying in Royal College of Art, while also working as a freelance designer and a tattooist.
Building her own artistic world around satire, grotesque, and epiphanic features, she tries to balance between the narrations of a story-teller and the passions of a poet. Her art hinges on embodiment and reproducibility, discussing how the attachment to wounds can influence one’s state of existence.
Artwork 1. two pieces from a painting series Life-painting I — acrylics on canvas, 10 x 10 cm, 2021. Life-painting III — acrylics on canvas, 10 x 15 cm, 2022.
Artwork 2. moving image Orthodontics, 4′ 59” , 16:9, colorful, PAL
During the pandemic, what we were accustomed to has melt into air, like a prolonged disturbance to the normal breathing pattern. The disturbance is the association I hope to present in these works. The paintings are embracing glitches as a refusal to conventional tranquility, while the moving image is a pieces discussing how one bounce back and forth between the social state of ‘being normal’ and ‘being an outcast’, echoing the experience of some of us during this time of changes. Perhaps they are not usual ways of respiration, but rather, forms of panting or gasping.
https://www.instagram.com/_s_zhen/
Duanqing Wang
Duanqing is a student of University of Arts London who makes use of a variety of materials from bed sheets to iron wire to produce his works.
Possess 2022 Adjustable size China Bed sheet, Glass Tank, Rust, Plastic Sheet, Iron wire,
The work attempts to show the process that the third nature of matter is constantly changing due to the continuous transformation of subjective and objective values in human behavior and cognitive process. In practice, this concept is shown as follows: the change of individual subjective conditions and objective conditions of the environment to which they belong affects people’s perception of “things that can be owned” and “the range of things occupied”.
These changes are reflected in the changes of the audience’s viewing Angle, position and way, which lead to the changes in the relationship between the internal elements of the work and between the audience and each element. Rust stains are the negative feelings of the artist as a result of this change, or the emotional traces he left behind when he experience this change. “The physical stillness of things does not prevent the eternal bias of human instinct due to limited cognition.”
https://www.instagram.com/wanduanqing/
Elisabetta Antonucci
Elisabetta is an artist from the woods. She makes work about picnics, and the prejudice she faces as a stuffed animal. She is currently collaborating with a group of underprivileged birds living in South East London.
Elisabetta Antonucci Medusa, 2020 Experimental film 2min50s
Lockdowns and solitude forced me to work with what I had: a good mobile phone, time, desolate surroundings to explore. My daily ritual became walking and looking carefully for a friendly presence, a message, a meaning. I keep collecting short videos and recording encounters with tiny nonhuman metaphorical presences. I don’t modify anything; I film what I meet as it is. Time is the most decisive element. This is my personalised form of self-healing, meditation and spiritual practice.
The landscape is my leading creative partner, but I always look for friends. My archive is called Looking for a Friend, which is metaphorical, and not. I explore the flow between things that may be considered “binary opposites” and how their combining may create new ways of seeing and feeling, especially around the dichotomy life/death. My obsession with death and sacrifice is sweetened when I contemplate ecosystems and nature circularity.
https://vimeo.com/user95120257
Guadalupe Ferrandez Tari
Guadalupe Ferrández is a Spanish multidisciplinary creative currently based in London. Who has a background in Fashion and has recently graduated from an MA in Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her writing practice, although still in development, focuses on exploring and capturing quotidianity through words (in an almost abstract manner). Aiming to trigger different sorts of emotions and feelings on the reader (at the center of the production of the piece). She likes to experiment with themes that can help us explain who we are, as humans, and how we interact, feel and life lived through the lenses of time. Furthermore, she is interested in exploring how narratives can become more immersive and multi-sensorial thanks to the use of multimedia formats.
Existing [in the background] 2022 Written piece
https://www.instagram.com/guadalupeft97/
Henryk Terpilowski
Henryk Terpilowski studied Three Dimensional Design at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. After moving to London he worked for Harvey Nichols display dept., designing and producing some of their famous window displays. He has worked as a decorative artist and prop maker since, specialising in ‘faux marbling’ In recent years, using some of the skills and processes from these fields, he has directed his talents to ‘fine art’. He produces work ranging from painted abstract compositions to 3D sculptures and installations, most recently experimenting with unconventional sheet materials, mixed media and light. He uses an experimental approach with materials, processes, ideas and emotions. When successful this leads to a ‘perfect storm’, an intuitive conclusion, an end result that, be it visually or conceptually, resonates with him and hopefully the viewer.
Breathless Mixed Media 160cm x 40cm x 40cm
Description – “Breathlessness or a tight chest can be a symptom of a physical lung (or heart) problem eg covid, and it can also be a sign of stress and anxiety. Respiratory problems can then also lead to further anxiety. With this work I aim to illustrate and explore the dichotomy between these physical and psychological states, and how they manifest as an emotional whole.
Quote from a covid victim:
“I lost my power to be able to do anything. I couldn’t stop coughing and my lungs felt like as if someone was squeezing them. Squeeze Squeeze Squeeze! The hyperventilation forced my four limbs to curl up and the non stop squeezing deprived my consciousness. My lungs felt like they were being hanged on the execution rope waiting to be executed!”
https://www.instagram.com/henrykterpart/
Hristo Yoradov
Hristo Yordanov is a contemporary visual artist and designer currently based in London. He works across a broad range of mediums such as installation, video, collages, digital art and design, relevant to the deep understanding of the moments of life and hidden senses, by they existence or imaginary.
2 x digital prints/posters of generative drawings (each A1 format 594 x 841 mm, Titles: We Need Trees & Generative Deer, 2021
Dissection of Reality, Size: 50 W x 160 H x 50 D cm
https://www.cosmopolitdesign.com/dissection-of-reality/
Dissection of Reality is a contemporary installation about human-environmental symbiosis that explores ecology subjects of Anthropocene epoch.
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. By the visual inspection of series of generative 3D images composed from modified data using programming algorithm, the viewer can allow extraction of additional information layers. This can be done by illuminating specific glass panels using LED lights and buttons, choosing colour patterns and sequences of flashing. Through the audience interaction and play with the art piece, there are numerous encounters for dissection and interpretation of the reality.
https://www.instagram.com/cosmopolit/
http://www.cosmopolitdesign.com/
Irfaan Nahaz Masroor
Nahaz is a creative and talented young boy who has always had a passion for art. He is 11 years old and sees the world in an exciting way which translates in his artwork. Nahaz enjoys a range of drawing styles and attempts all themes of drawings such as animations, landscapes, and abstracts. He says his favourite hobby is learning something new from science, maths, or art.
Chaos of Colours 2022 Oil on canvas
The Lover’s Lungs 2022 Oil on canvas
Black White Night 2022 Oil on canvas
The Aliens Home 2022 Oil on canvas
Isobel Scott-Malden
‘I had my debut sell-out solo show in The Greenwich Gallery in September 2021.
I am the winner of the Emerson Award for Young Woman Artist (2021) and the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize People’s Vote (2021).
My work was featured in The Russell Gallery winter show in 2021.
I am a self-taught artist born and based in London.
I had always wanted to paint but focused mostly on sculpture and other crafts until I studied art history. Now, taking inspiration from the old masters, nature, poetry and my imagination I try to create work that is detailed and meaningful and also has a dialogue with the past. My work is mainly figurative and influenced by Realism and Japanese art but with a contemporary sensibility.
My style is detailed and labour-intensive so I take a long time to consider my compositions and each painting can take an average of one to three months to complete.’
The roses had the look of flowers that are looked at, 2021 Oil on board 35 x 45.7 cm
‘To respire is not just to breathe – to oxygenate our cells and keep us alive – it is also, crucially, to smell. It is possible to survive without a sense of smell but so much of the pleasure of being alive can be attributed to scent. The figure in my painting (who is partially obscured) smells the roses and has her own contained and individual experience with the flowers – that are beautiful for all to look at – but only if you go very close do you discover they are naturally perfumed. In her red dress she is one with the flowers and this absorption with the fragile and pleasurable natural world is juxtaposed with the potential danger of nature represented by the tiger hidden in the corner. Nature can provide life and pleasure and take it away just as fast.’
https://www.isobelscottmalden.com/ ,
https://www.instagram.com/artistisobel/
Kaibing Zhang
Kyra tends to create highly interactive installation performance works. She regards the audience’s participation in the work and the atmosphere derived from it as the work itself. Materials, objects, and placement in the work are all elements for creating atmosphere. The placement and presentation of works usually require the audience to take a specific action to complete the connection and communication between the work and the audience. The artist believes that the change from object to artwork can only be completed with the participation of the audience.
Title: I saw your breath at that moment (2021) Photography Documentation of airplanes
The gas produced by the airplane remains in the air for a moment as a long white line after the changes through the surrounding air. Like the momentary imprint of our breath on the glass, it is a momentarily visible breath. This work encourages the audience to see the airplane as a purely existing object, devoid of its definition and role in society. It only exists as an objective object, and these visible breaths are the traces of its existence.
https://www.instagram.com/kyra_zhang_/
Steam Bao Collective – Kyrin Chen and Vi Trinh
As a collective, Chen and Trinh (“Steam Bao Collective”) seek to subvert the dogma in interactive art through the medium of video games. Playing on the artworld’s expectations on the very potential of video-game mechanics and on the regular game-player’s expectations on interactive controls, the collective explores themes of agency and human connections. In their current work, they challenge audiences with the discombobulation between vision and sound and the Sontagian duality between violence and voyeuristic joys in a naïve and deceptively soothing manner .
Kyrin Chen is a MFA Fine Art student at Goldsmiths University of London. Prior to their postgraduate studies, Chen has been a multi-disciplinary artist with a primary focus on the ephemerality of sound, and have exhibited at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London and Cafe OTO, London. They have held residencies at Arts, Letters & Numbers, New York and Wait & Roll print studio, Shanghai.
https://www.instagram.com/xxchecx/
Vi Trinh is a MFA Fine Art student at Goldsmiths University of London and a graduate from BA Visual and Media Arts Practice & Leadership at University of Richmond. Trinh has exhibited work at the Target Gallery, Harnett Museum of Art, and Digital U in England. Tirnh has held an artist residency at the Torpedo Factory of Alexandria and is currently a remote resident at Carnegie Mellon University.
Trinh’s practice is concerned by the internet and the ethos of the internet as an illusionary space and the interaction with its interface. The internet as it appears; democratic, and free, and the reality of exclusionary design by the very few and the profits they gain from it.
https://www.instagram.com/v_trinh/
Steam Bao Collective Cloudbox, 2021 – 2022 Nteractive art / Video game Size: Dimensions variable, 5 – 25 min
Cloudbox Year: 2021 – 2022 Medium: Interactive art / Video game (with stereo sound / headphones) Duration: 5 – 25 minutes
Instruction: Hold W,A,S,D / Arrow keys to move *Trigger Warning: Loud noises and explosions
Link to download: https://steam-bao.itch.io/cloudbox
Masha Chelova
Masha Chelova is a performer and a visual storyteller across media. Her work explores relationships between physical bodies, communities and technology through movement and stillness. She also teaches yoga and meditation in SE London.
Fresh London Air, 2022 aper, wood 53×32 cm
London Air, inspired by life in SE London, anatomy studies for yoga teacher training and a poem by Sara Dawood, aka ARAB(ITCH).
https://www.mashachelova.net/art
Nigel Bristow
NG Bristow is a writer, director, artist and lecturer. He runs the MA in Directing Fiction at Goldsmiths. His latest work, A Week To Walk A Fortnight, a collection of geolocated audio stories, is available as a chapbook published by Sampson Low at tinyurl.com/jjdaxrj2
ELSEWHERE，2022 Experimental film Dimensions variable
https://walklistencreate.org/forums/users/ng-bristow/
Noah Merzbacher
An object full of fantasies like swallowing you (2022)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_J1Zr1BY88lbxp0tjvx0AHZ2zYUsAVUc/view?usp=sharing
https://www.instagram.com/noahmerzbacher/
Philip Kinshuck
Philip is a student from the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He creates digital interactive art making use of machine learning techniques to track the body’s movement and using people to interact with digital visualizations.
Title: Digital Trails
Medium: JavaScript interactive art using pose net (ml5.js)
Year: 2022
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhVmk9ec3uo
Qianru Zhang
Goldsmiths MA Performance Making student. New to almost everything. Trying to be a good human being and make some art hopefully.
Qianru Zhang Title: Watch and See 2022 Photography 50 x 50 cm
The hand is touch, desire, connection; the palm is inclusion, liberation, giving and taking. I hope that one day, women’s red menstruation will no longer need to break through all these barriers to ‘be’ seen and discussed , but will break free, exist freely, and on its own, as natural as respiration that every human does.
https://www.instagram.com/summerlouder/
Qidi/Didi Su
ん八üㅜ3D (muted), time-based media (water from red cabbages, tomatos and tree branches, sewage, rain water, petri dish, body, eyes, worms, germs, snail, fungi and other living organisms), 4 minutes 11 seconds, 2021
Qike Shi
Cells and Things 2021 Digital art
The word ‘cell’ can refer to both an enclosed room, as in a prison, as well as the most basic elements of plant or animal life, as in the cells of the body. The genitals wrapped in cell she refers to them simply as “things”. “Each cell deals with a fear. Fear is pain… each cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at.”
https://www.instagram.com/qike777/
Shaohan Tang
China/1999 Isolation Gelatin silver print 20*25cm
https://www.instagram.com/m_parad0x/
on Entering, audio-visual-generative animation (water from red cabbages, tomatos and tree branches, sewage, rain water, petri dish, germs, fungi and other living organisms), 1 minute, 2021
https://www.instagram.com/diddisuoo/
Xuemei Huang
Untitled Acrylic on canvas 80*65 cm 2022
When Omicron was spreading in London in this January, I chose to release my energy by painting alone. Alcohol was consumed before painting to help relax and avoid rational thinking. The painting is not only an outcome represented here, but also a documentary of the flowing energy on that day.
Civilization History 2022 Charcoal and pastel on paper 177*84 cm
The huge dead trees are protecting the young from darkness, meanwhile constraining them by the space left in the roots and branches. Just like inhales and exhales are followed by each other, breaking through the constraints, which is usually ignored, is as important as inheriting in civilization.
A bit of green suggests hope when the view is dominated by the old dead trees.
Untitled 2022 Acrylic on canvas 80*65 cm
When Omicron was spreading in London in this January, I chose to release my energy by painting alone. Alcohol was consumed before painting to help relax and avoid rational thinking. The painting is not only an outcome represented here, but also a documentary of the flowing energy on that day.
Untitled 2021 Soil, clay, ready-made buddha statue size variable
I dug soil from a garden nearby my flat and mixed it with clay, which is also from soil, to make the statue in the front. Although Buddha (Sykyamunni) himself was against icon worship, his followers have built an immense number of statues. We humans like to rely on something concrete, but the most important things are often invisible, like Buddha’s wisdom, like our breath.
The project was done with bare hands to experience the feeling from the soil. An earthworm was digging in and out when I built the statue. Some root and stems came with soil are still visible.
Meaning of Existence 2022 Handmade paper, staples, wall Size variable
Civilization and the individuals. Mainstream values and the others.
Are the staples only considered valuable when they are pinning a paper to the wall?
https://www.instagram.com/blackblacktea/
Zhiyu Lu (Lucy Meeber)
Unpredictability of the body and its texture feeds the fascination for the unknown. Everything is interdependent and mutually influenced. Engaging with multi-sensory experiences guides me separately and simultaneously to a sense of existence both spiritual and physical. As with the spontaneity of book space, my practical work attempts to hunt interrelationships between the inner self and the languages of the physical and symbolic body through clues.
Trees obey their own rules of growth. The outer tree bark is dead, however, the underneath is still full of vitality.
When I assemble these pictures together, using Dragon Scale Bookbinding method, the recombination of partial textures reveals a noumenon of the subject, like a map.
https://www.instagram.com/lucy.meeber/
Zhiyuan Xue
Wanting to understand profound ideas and themes, I am also drawn to the trivial and easy everyday things and the shallow release of personality. Wandering between the two, trying to find the connections that exist between them and articulating them in calm, undirected, even playful language.
Breathe 2021 – Oil on canvas 20×20
Breathing is the process of exchange between our muscles and the oxygen in the external living environment, which is necessary for the metabolism of living cells.
Translating the necessity of this exchange process to the exhalation of cultural life, the breathing between different cultures is the process of mutual exchange.
Mask 2021 – Oil on canvas 20×20
Filtered exhalation and inhalation The mask rusts and stains Covering half of the face Breathing through the mask Surviving in the mask Inside the mask is your own world A universe of your own Hiding under this mask Sometimes it can also be a kind of disguise and escape
https://www.instagram.com/xuezhiyuan_/
Zoe Armit
Zoë Armit is a 23-year-old illustrator, animator and activist based in Cambridge, UK and Ålesund, Norway. The majority of her work is dedicated to and inspired by the understanding of and advocation for animals and animal rights. Using combinations of paint, pencils, irony and digital media, Zoë draws attention to the astonishing beauty and ability of the natural world, simultaneously commenting on the crudity of those who threaten it. She has recently received a 1:1 in her BA degree in animation, creating a hard-hitting animated film detailing the destructive nature of the animal agriculture industry. She is hoping to use the momentum of the film’s success to continue campaigning for those not often spoken for, intending that her work will contribute towards more considered moral beliefs and actions from her fellow humans.
Behind The Jugular, 2021 Animation & Paintings 21×29.7 cm
https://gradshows.uca.ac.uk/showcase/zoe-armit-animation/
https://www.instagram.com/artfulandcrafty/
