White Rabbit Gallery -

Didactics – English

Didactics – English

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REN HANG 任航

b. 1987, Changchun, Jilin d. 2017

Untitled, 2012
digital C-type print

Ren Hang’s photographs celebrated spontaneity and nudity in a culture that tends to disapprove of both. “We were born nude; I just photographed things in their more natural conditions,” he explains. His models were friends or admirers whom he posed, usually indoors, with a minimum of planning. Deadpan expressions, flat backdrops and startling colour contrasts add to the images’ surreal playfulness: the artist, who took up photography to relieve chronic depression, said he would never continue a shoot unless everyone was having fun.

XIA HAN 夏瀚

b. 1993, Shanghai

Humiliation, 2022-23
inflatable figure, digital animation, open source handheld game consoles, plastic toy hand

Xia Han grew up playing video games on his Game Boy Advance, PC, and PlayStation 3. Over time, he realised how life has become increasingly gamified—from workplace rewards to body customisation. His installation Humiliation critiques this shift, featuring a large inflatable model of a naked lower body, looping videos on game consoles, and a toy finger. “You can think of the inflatable model as representing power, while the little finger symbolises the small individual,” says Xia. The work confronts the pervasiveness of digital power dynamics and highlights the aggressive nature of online violence.

Less is More, 2023
dual channel video installation (colour, sound), 3D printed plastic, acrylic paint
video 3 min 25 sec

Bitch Boy, 2023
acrylic on canvas

Xia Han believes “that gaming has profoundly shaped the mindset of my generation.” He explores the sexualisation of female characters and gender representation in games through his works Less is More and Bitch Boy. The artist observed how, in many commercial video games aimed at male consumers, female characters gain stronger defence stats as their armour becomes more revealing. Yet, he also noted how male players frequently choose to play as female avatars in these games. Using tech to question tech, Xia examines gender, identity, and the pressure of societal roles.

SHANG LIANG 商亮

b. 1981, Beijing

Boxing Man No.7, 2019
oil on canvas

Boxing Man No.4, 2019
oil on canvas

Exaggerated, larger-than-life muscles burst from the frame of Shang Liang’s surreal paintings of masculinity. Her early works, inspired by adolescence, feature teenage boys with overdeveloped muscles—straining, yearning to become powerful men. In her newer Boxing Man series, these figures evolve into monstrous forms, their strength both absurd and menacing. Their anatomy dissolves entirely: heads are replaced with boxing gloves, suggesting a bizarre mutation. “It’s a new species,” Shang says. Her work critiques traditional masculinity—its construction, contradictions, and dominance within society.

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WANG HAIYANG 王海洋

b. 1984, Weifang, Shandong

Mother, 2021
acrylic on canvas

Dionysus’s Birth, 2020
acrylic on canvas

“My work is a bow that is tightened, not an arrow that is released,” says Wang Haiyang. “I want to describe the uncalmable energy inside me—the surging force beneath the calm sea.” Inspired by Carlos Saura’s film Tango, his painting Mother embodies personal reflections on family, childhood, and human nature. These themes also emerge in Dionysus’s Birth, which references the twice-born Greco-Roman god carried to term in Zeus’s thigh. Both works pulse with raw, unfiltered energy—honest and unapologetic—unearthing the shadowy depths of humanity, desire, and the emotional chaos within.

Double Fikret, 2012
video animation (colour, sound)
3 min 27 sec

Like a colourful Dalí painting brought to life, Wang Haiyang’s stop-motion animation unfolds as a stream of surreal associations and absurd, rapid transformations. To create it, the artist used pastels to hand-draw over 1,200 images on two pieces of sandpaper. In Arabic, Fikret means “to think,” suggesting that the title Double Fikret may allude to George Orwell’s concept of “doublethink” from 1984—the ability to accept contradictory beliefs simultaneously, often as a result of political indoctrination. Erasing and re-drawing daily for over a year, the film ultimately returns to its origin: a blank sheet of paper.

QIU JIONGJIONG 邱炯炯

b. 1977, Leshan, Sichuan

Madame, 2009-10
video (black and white, sound)
122 min 10 sec

While shooting, Qiu Jiongjiong often asked himself, “What is it I want to film—a homosexual, or a complex and interesting person?” Captured in black and white, his documentary focuses on Fan Qihui, who by day was a tailor and designer, and by night performed in the smoky underground bars of Beijing as his drag persona, Madame Bilan de Linphel. Qiu invites us to witness the transformation of an apparently ordinary man into a nocturnal cabaret star. He was captivated by the contradictions of this elusive figure—“an angel and a ghost among us.”

FANG DI 方迪

b. 1987, Shenzhen, Guangdong

Ye Fu, 2013
video (colour, sound)
3 min 56 sec

Fang Di says he “wanted to find himself in the Western value system.” His response was to subvert Christian iconography in his provocative video piece, featuring a cigarette-smoking Jesus, a defaced Madonna, and a gender-bending performer in bondage gear with a green wig—the choice of costume, Fang says, “serves as a symbol of transgender identity, a spirit of resistance.” The title refers to the performer, Liu Yefu, and the Chinese pronunciation of “Jesus.” Ultimately, the work challenges Western cultural dominance and explores the complexities of cultural identity in a globalised world.

MAGDALEN WONG 黃頌恩

b. 1981, Hong Kong

Pink and Baby Blue, 2010
video (colour, silent)
20 min 21 sec

In Magdalen Wong’s video piece, a plastic toy baby is diapered with alternating layers of pink and baby blue acrylic paint, forming an absurdly large, bubble-shaped diaper. Inspired by seeing buckets of toy babies at a store checkout, Wong wondered why it was it so easy to identify the pink diapered baby as a girl and the blue one as a boy, though they looked identical? Highlighting gender as a social construct, the accumulating paint engulfs the baby, reflecting how society consumes us in a web of manufactured thoughts and experiences.

LIU YI 刘毅

b. 1990, Ningbo, Zhejiang

Chaos Theory, 2014
video (colour, sound)
8 min 16 sec

Merging the ancient tradition of ink painting with stop-motion animation, Liu Yi creates a surreal video work from hundreds of delicate ink-and-wash drawings. The process is slow and painstaking, requiring patience and practiced control. Fascinated by ink since childhood, her style echoes the elegant ink-wash techniques of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in the 1960s. Inspired by the jumble of images found in dreams, Chaos Theory depicts everything from erotic fantasies and childhood memories to violence and nature scenes. Liu sees dreams as order within chaos, and chaos within order, all fused into one system.

YANG SHEN 杨深

b. 1973, Beijing

Ducks Mocking Sailor, 2016
oil on canvas

Sailor and Monster, 2016
oil on canvas

Yang Shen’s canvases are populated by characters from his vast collection of pop culture memorabilia: he loves Tintin, Japanese anime, magical realism, sci-fi comics and the propaganda of his childhood. Juxtaposed in his surreal landscapes these eclectic references suggest a science-fiction future that never quite arrived. The events he depicts may be as weirdly illogical as a dream, but they refer in subtle ways to the social, political and economic landscapes of our times, and to Yang’s nostalgic memories.

WANG JUN-JIEH 王俊傑

b. 1963, Taipei, Taiwan

Passion, 2017
video (colour, sound)
13 min 25 sec

“When passion ceases, all other driving forces disappear,” says Wang Jun-Jieh. A pioneer of new media and video art, his surreal, homoerotic sci-fi video piece presents a highly stylised fantasy of astronauts, cruising sailors, and murder. Drawing from Fassbinder’s Querelle, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Godard’s Passion, the work weaves cinematic references with fashion icons, including Alexander McQueen’s famous skulls. Produced in large professional film studios with a 20-person team, the work encapsulates Wang’s belief that “the end of passion signals the death of the individual.”

PIXY LIAO 廖逸君

b. 1979, Shanghai

Ping Pong Balls, 2013
digital C-type print

Debut, 2012
digital C-type print

“What will happen if man and woman exchange their roles of sex and power?” asks Pixy Liao. Taken from her Experimental Relationship series, these works celebrate the unconventional relationship the artist shares with her partner, Moro, who is five years her junior. Through photography, she playfully subverts traditional power dynamics in relationships, with a keen awareness of how gender roles are performed. Often presenting herself in the dominant role and her partner in a submissive position, she turns the tables on the artist-and-muse relationship.

SIN WAI KIN 單慧乾

b. 1991, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

It’s Always You, 2021
dual channel video (colour, sound)
4 min 5 sec

“Every time I put on a face, look at myself and embody that character, it changes my relationship with my body,” says Sin Wai Kin. Merging archetypes from traditional Cantonese and Peking Opera with masculine drag characters, their dual-channel work presents a four-piece boyband that deconstructs racial and gender binaries. Sin plays all four members of the band, each with a distinct persona: the pretty boy, the older boy, the playful one, and the hunk. The work highlights how boybands are strategically commodified for mass consumption—offering fans dreams of love, fantasy, and collective escape.

The Breaking Story, 2022
six channel video (colour, sound)
6 min 31 sec

“We live in a world where there are many different realities coexisting together,” says Sin Wai Kin. “Everything is an illusion, and people see and try to tell the story of this illusion.” In this six-channel video work, Sin explores the boundary between reality and fiction through cosmic news anchors—performed by their personas Change and The Storyteller. Delivering surreal, philosophical reports on existence, consciousness, and identity, the anchors parody familiar broadcast tropes. With maniacal smiles and Taoist undertones, one remarks, “In other news, you are not who you think you are.”

LIN ZHIPENG (aka No. 223) 林志鹏

b. 1979, Guangdong

Grand Amour, Hijiri Endo and Guo Wei, 2018
archival pigment print

Smoking 3some, 2018
archival pigment print

Hijiri Smoking At the Curtain, 2018
archival pigment print

Layers, 2018
archival pigment print

Lin Zhipeng, known as No. 223—a name taken from Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express— is a key figure in China’s new wave of photography known as sī shè yǐng (私摄影), or “private photography”. His work channels the wild, volatile energy of China’s younger generation, exploring themes of love, sexuality, gender, and free expression with raw intimacy and poetic flair. His series Grand Amour, shot over three spontaneous days at Paris’s Hotel Grand Amour, captures irreverent hedonism and the restless spirit of a generation seeking freedom amid rapid cultural change.

ZHENG BO 郑波

b. 1974, Beijing

Pteridophilia 3, 2018
video (colour, sound)
16 min 24 sec

Pteridophilia 4, 2019
video (colour, sound)
16 min 35 sec

Zheng Bo calls for a future where humans are no longer at the centre of the world, urging respect for all forms of life—biologically, culturally, intellectually, and politically. Their video series Pteridophilia explores intimate encounters between queer bodies and ferns in Taiwan’s forests. The title, a portmanteau of “pterido-” (fern) and “-philia” (love), reflects a fetish or love for pteridophyta plants. Moving beyond binaries of human or non-human, natural or unnatural, the work connects “queer plants and queer people” to challenge our mental, physical, and metaphysical relations with nature.

ZHU ZI 竹子 (吴建安)

b. 1984, Jiangxi

White Stone, 2022
acrylic on canvas

Chongqing Lake, 2022
acrylic on canvas

Finger Tree, 2022
acrylic on canvas

Departing from his signature monochrome palette, Zhu Zi began exploring colour, stating, “Colour is highly emotional and deeply personal—everyone experiences it differently.” Yet his approach remains rooted in Confucian restraint. “The practice of control is the highest form of refinement,” he says. Drawing inspiration from everyday WeChat photos shared by friends, Zhu transforms ordinary scenes—parks, lakes, daily moments—into extraordinary compositions. Despite the significance of colour, negative space remains equally vital, referencing the classical Chinese painting tradition of liubai, or “leaving blank.”

JIŪ SOCIETY 啾小组

Est. 2015, Shenzhen, Guangdong

Jiu Bobo, 2015
video (colour, sound)
1 min 20 sec

Jiū Society’s founding members—Fang Di, Ji Hao, and Jin Haofan—were born and raised in Shenzhen and consider themselves “experimental products” of China’s Reform and Opening policies. For Jiu Bobo, they created a camp re-enactment of a viral North Korean video featuring a small child performing a kitsch song. The lyrics—“Daddy loves me, Mummy loves me, love me, kiss me and hug me…” —become a satirical song of praise to their city, set against a backdrop of demolition, new construction, propaganda slogans, and a looming statue of Deng Xiaoping.

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HAN DUYI 韩笃一

b. 1994, Shanghai

Ordinance of the Subconscious Treatment, 2021-23
embroidered silk upholstery, wood

Han Duyi’s mesmeric installation features “neuroaesthetic” objects that explore mental health and contemporary Chinese culture. Drawing from religious, folkloric, and therapeutic sources, his work merges the clinical atmosphere of hospitals with the sacred ambiance of Buddhist and Taoist temples. Inspired by Taoist Fulu talismans, Han creates intricate symbols representing vitamins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, alongside therapeutic prompts. Referencing classical Chinese furniture, the silk-upholstered pieces are adorned with embroidered patterns linked to healing and the pursuit of happiness. The result is a richly detailed fusion of ancient wisdom and modern science.

SHIH YUNG-CHUN 時永駿

b. 1978, Taipei, Taiwan

Private Hotel, 2024
acrylic paint, wood, ceramics, textiles, ready-mades, 3D printed plastic, oil on canvas
installed 191 x 320 x 230 cm

The Pastry Chef, 2024
oil on canvas

Choice Paralysis in Tableware, 2024
oil on canvas

Homage to European Architecture, 2024
oil on canvas, 3D printed plastic

Mirrors, peepholes, dollhouses, and plastic toys abound in the delightfully chaotic world of Shih Yung-Chun. Drawing on his upbringing in a military dependents’ village in Taiwan, Shih incorporates found objects, sculpture, 3D printing, and painting to create wild, eccentrically layered scenes. He views vintage items as carriers of memory, noting, “Old things always hold a place in the new era.” Blending nostalgia with a camp aesthetic, Shih’s whimsical domestic tableaux aim to question the “various subtle absurdities in daily life that are easily overlooked.”

XIE YUXIN 谢雨欣

b. 1997, Daqing, Heilongjiang

Being is Always the Being of a Being, 2024
iron powder, stainless steel, magnets, electric motor, sound

A hypnotic stainless-steel cylinder slowly rotates on a bed of iron powder. As it turns, magnetised powder clings to its surface, gradually revealing quotes from Paul Perro, Susan Sontag, and Martin Heidegger—on secrecy, desire, and ontology. Inspired by a dry-roll magnetic separator once used to extract gold from sand, the work is accompanied by the haunting tune of Oh! Susanna—a love song later adopted as a gold rush anthem. Like a melody’s shifting meaning or a changing landscape, Xie Yuxin interlaces material, philosophy, and history to ask: “How can ‘existence’ be proven?”

SAMSON YOUNG 楊嘉輝

b. 1979, Hong Kong

Risers, 2017
neon, plywood, synthetic carpet

Samson Young’s installation features an uneven choral riser with neon text: “The world is yours but also ours but basically yours.” Taken from Mao Zedong’s 1957 speech, the phrase is stripped of context, challenging the audience to consider who truly owns the world when marginalised voices continue to be silenced on the global stage. Created for Songs for Disaster Relief at the 57th Venice Biennale, the work critiques 1980s–90s charity singles like We Are the World, highlighting their imperialist undertones and revealing how idealism can be co-opted to exclude those it claims to help.

FANG DAQI 方大祺

b. 1992, Wuhan, Hubei

The Marshes, 2020-21
laser print on newsprint, electric fan

“My hometown is always associated with an endless field of marshes,” reflects Fang Daqi. His large-scale photographic collage, produced on fading newsprint, documents Wuhan’s disappearing marshlands—landscapes now overtaken by urban development. Based on hundreds of photographs taken in 2019, the work mourns the loss of his childhood environment while also suggesting resilience. “The reeds don’t simply disappear,” Fang explains. “They reappear in urban corners, still full of vitality.” More than nostalgia, his piece becomes a metaphor for adaptation and hope, reflecting his belief in life’s ability to persist.

SHEN WEI 沈玮

b. 1977, Shanghai

House Frame, 2015
archival pigment print

Peacock, 2014
archival pigment print

Hanging Shirt, 2015
archival pigment print

Table for Two, 2014
archival pigment print

Plum Tree, 2014
archival pigment print

Self-portrait (Fruitful), 2009
archival pigment print

Self-portrait (Bent), 2009
archival pigment print

Brick Wall, 2015
archival pigment print

Raised in Shanghai and now based in New York, Shen Wei says his practice is largely “inspired by my upbringing in conservative China,” where nude studies were banned in art schools. Pushing against cultural boundaries, his photographs are taken across the globe during his extensive travels. Shaped by freedom, spontaneity, self-reflection, and self-discovery, Shen notes, “Each image is a moment of introspection and rebellion.” His work illustrates a journey both inward and outward, unveiling the interconnectedness between our bodies and the world they inhabit.

CHEN JINBIN 陈锦彬

b. 1994, Meizhou, Guangdong

Alix at Rest, 2024
oil on canvas

Untitled 2, 2024
oil on unstretched canvas

In the Boat with the Prince, 2024
oil on unstretched canvas

“To some extent, my art is an extension of myself,” says Chen Jinbin. His practice explores themes of gender, homosexual desire, and “in-betweenness.” “I often describe my works as being about encounters of bodies,” he explains, captivated by the seemingly random moments that can alter the course of our lives. Chen’s work reimagines a range of sources—online images, myth, poetry, and art history—including The Song of the Yue Boatman and The Sons of Clovis II. Using a delicate colour palette, he crafts spaces where masculinity and vulnerability are tenderly redefined.

GE HUI 葛辉

b. 1983, Harbin, Heilongjiang

Two White Cats, 2017-22
oil on canvas

Ge Hui’s paintings are renowned for their expression of longing and a sense of strangeness that defies categorisation. In Two White Cats, contorted bodies float in unnatural postures, assembled from multiple perspectives. “Fragments of different people gather in the same image, creating a split appearance,” he says. “It’s like a person has many uncontrollable aspects.” The titular cats—mirror-like yet distinct, much like their androgynous human counterparts—add to the work’s dreamlike tension. Rendered in bold, solid colours, the figures seem suspended in time, mere empty gestures that accentuate an unconscious space.

QI WENZHANG 亓文章

b. 1981, Laiwu, Shandong

Untitled (Sweet-Dream), 2019
oil on canvas

Untitled, 2006
oil on canvas

Untitled, 2020
oil on canvas

Untitled (Pond), 2018
oil on canvas

Untitled, 2005
oil on canvas

Unknown Painter, 2019
oil on canvas

Man with Flowers, 2005-06
oil on canvas

Hovering somewhere between reality and fantasy, Qi Wenzhang’s dreamlike paintings often feature nameless individuals. Their gestures speak louder than words. “The way they move—the way they raise a hand, turn around, tilt their head, or give you a certain look,” Qi reflects, “it wouldn’t be the same if it were someone else.” Rooted in real-life encounters—friends, strangers, street photos—his subjects are rendered in oil paint, which he insists “has more feeling.” Avoiding both realism and surrealism, Qi explains, “I slightly lift the real.” His paintings come to life in this delicate space between gestures and dreams.

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ISAAC CHONG WAI 莊偉

b. 1990, Guangzhou, Guangdong

Self Portrait: The Evening When I was Beaten up by a Stranger With a Glass Bottle, 2015
archival inkjet print

In November 2015, Isaac Chong Wai was assaulted in Berlin, where he lives and works. A stranger initiated a conversation that quickly turned violent, culminating in a homophobic and racially motivated attack with a glass bottle. In response, Chong Wai took this self-portrait upon returning home. “It was an instinctive act—a way to capture the moment,” he explains. Later, he noticed that the wound on his head had formed a smiley face—an eerie yet powerful symbol. The image stands as a quiet act of defiance against violence and a reflection on resilience in the face of trauma.

Falling Reversely, 2021-24
seven channel video installation (colour, sound)
9 min 7 sec

In Falling Reversely, Isaac Chong Wai deepens his exploration of violence, focusing on attacks against both Asian migrant and queer communities. The video installation features dancers reenacting falling bodies, inspired by CCTV footage of assaults in public spaces. “We studied the CCTV footage,” he explains, “slowing and reversing the trajectory of these attacks through movement.” Responding to systemic violence, the performers imagine an alternative future—one where harm is not only reversed but transformed into a new form of protest.

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