Liquid Body, Leaking Frontier
at Goethe-Institut China
Special Support: 69 Art Campus
Exhibition Period: 11 September 2026 - 17 January 2027
Curator: Tang Yifei
Artists: Chen Tianzhuo, Chen Ruofan, Chen Zhe, Isaac Chong Wai, Liao Wen, Lucy McRae, Man Mei To, Wang Yuyu, Yin Yunya
Arichives: Freud Letter, Xiaozu Corridor – Performance Art Video Zine I
As part of its "Teahouse 798" project, the Goethe-Institut China will launch the exhibition "Liquid Body, Leaking Frontier" from 11 September 2026 to 17 January 2027, curated by TANG Yifei. The exhibition's archival lead draws on Sigmund Freud’s letter written during the 1920 Spanish Flu, which will be juxtaposed in time and space with artists' paper paintings, sculptural installations, and video works. Taking body imagery and embodied perception as its vessel, the exhibition unfolds a process of delayed digestion and prolonged reaction. This project also received special support from 69 Art Campus.
Amid the aftermath of the 1920 Spanish Flu, Freud noted in a letter to his close friend Oskar Pfister: "The loss of a child seems to be a serious, narcissistic injury; what is known as mourning will probably follow only later." This observation, stemming from a private experience of bereavement, reveals a collective experience: when a structural shock occurs abruptly, the subject's perception, digestion, identification and processing of the event are often delayed. Just as the social-historical panorama presented by Laura Spinney in Pale Rider, after a crisis, social mechanisms prioritise restoring order and returning to normalcy. Many forms of grief, contradiction and turmoil that cannot be accommodated by mainstream narratives lack public channels for expression, commemoration and placement, and consequently sink into the depths of individual lives.
In this context, the exhibited works, created in the last few years and the present, feature both abstract and figurative representations that are intimately connected to the body itself. The body serves as a container for storing memories and projecting the traces of dislocation within social structures. It is also a form of expression beyond language; as an alternative perceptual ritual, it brings to light individual experiences and subconscious reflections that existing discursive systems cannot categorise. All video works in the exhibition contain no dialogue; instead, they utilise advances and retreats, movements and gestures, and non-linear visual rhythm to capture the subject's suspension, negotiation, and adaptation to possible orders. The sculptural installations explore varying scales of bodily perception, traversing boundaries and growing in deviation. This exhibition examines how enduring vulnerability and chronic violence are ingrained and attempts to bring a resilience that arises not from recovery but from internal transformation and a reimagining of existence.