Exhibiting artists: Zikun Feng / Jaime Hyun-bin Jo / Kye Lim Kim / Kate Metzner / Ziyi Ren / An Sunghi / Isaac Zhang / Yifan Zhou / Chen Yang
When the mist fades presents nine artists from around the world exploring themes of isolation, collective anxiety, precarity, loss and living through unprecedented times during the pandemic. This body of work is presented on the Stanley Picker Gallery website and as a virtual exhibition.
In Unimagined, Zikun Feng deconstructs daily life under Covid-19 focusing on props related to PPE such as face masks, hand gloves and sanitisers. Feng says, ‘my fear of the virus transformed me into a state of numbness, irritability, insecurity, boredom and discomfort.’ Unimagined asks questions about our needs and fears of other individuals and our dependence on information versus our skepticism about authoritative propaganda. Jaime Hyun-bin Jo works with expired analogue medium format film in Shudder. Photographing flowers, the reproductive organs of plants and female friends and models wearing masks he experiments with the movement of the camera to disrupt representation and raises questions about ways of seeing in relation to the female body. Kye Lim Kim’s Yellow takes its starting point from the South Korean experience of racial discrimination in London after the COVID-19 outbreak. Working with extended female family members of various ages, Kim stages a series of photographs in domestic environments to impart the emotional impact of racism; the microaggressions and how it alienates, creates shame and penetrates the body psychologically.
Zikun Feng, Untouchable, 2020. Colour photograph.
Jaime Jo, Flowers, 2020. Colour photograph.
Kye Lim Kim, Yellow series 1, 2021. Analog film.
Kate Metzner, The Nurse, Moments Between Speaking, 2020-2021. Colour photograph.
Ziyi Ren, Our Sky Is Your Floor, 2021. Colour photograph.
An Sunghi, Death and Life on the Parabola, 2021. Colour photograph.
Isaac Zhang, The Falling Puppet, 2018. B&W photograph.
Yifan Zhou, Pandora’s Armpits (3), 2021. Colour photograph.
Chen Yang, She has Always Conformed (4), 2021. Colour photograph.
In Moments Between Speaking, Kate Metzner portraits focus on the relationships she builds with her subjects. In one portrait the sitter wears Metzner’s leather jacket, blurring the boundary between the photographer and the sitter, questioning who is observing who. Ziyi Ren’s Our Sky Is Your Floor creates a poetic narrative drawn from photographs she made while staying with her grandparents during the pandemic in Weicheng, a small town located in Sichuan province, China. Wandering around the house and local fields with her camera noticing small details such as scattered wings of dragonflies, cicada shells and a crystal ball, Ren combines and places these locally collected fragments and objects on human skin and in the landscape. In Death and Life on the Parabola, An Sunghi juxtaposes images of frozen food ingredients, metaphorically representative of life, and those of graves newly formed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The soil becomes a witness of the pandemic connecting life and death, and Sunghi’s spiritual relationship to Asian agricultural culture.
Chen Yang explores her vulnerabilities and desires by focusing on the complex growth issues of Chinese girls. She has Always Conformed is dedicated to raising awareness of how female adolescents are educated in China under strict parental control and the exaggerated standards of female morality imposed by society. Isaac Zhang’s Somniloquence is a journey into uncharted territory, somewhere between the commonplace and the paranormal. Bearing the meaning of sleep-talking, Somniloquence connotes a reality-blurred dream wherein murmuring and whispering are heard by the faceless and nameless figures appearing in the work. In Pandora’s Armpit, Yifan Zhou’s grapples with her isolation and an uncertain world combining photomontages with drawings and illustrations meditating on the armpit as an intensely private and sacred part of the body. For Zhou, the armpit should never be shown in public and when opened is akin to a Pandora’s box.
'When the mist fades' at Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, 2021. Still from Mozilla Hubs virtual exhibition.
Virtual Exhibition
Visit the virtual exhibition here. We recommend viewing on desktop.
- Follow the link and select “join room”.
- You may change your display name and avatar, then select “accept” and then “enter room”.
- You should be able to look around by dragging the little white dot, and move around using the arrows on your keyboard.
- Once your visit is complete, select “leave”.
Please note: Depending on your device and internet connection, there may be some limitations in your experience of the online exhibition.
Many thanks to Durril Weller for developing the virtual exhibition.
MA Photography
The MA Photography teaching team commented, “We have been privileged to see this group of artists develop their ideas into significant bodies of work which reverberate strongly beyond the personal.”
MA Photography at Kingston School of Art encourages dialogue, dynamic enquiry and reflection on the social, technological, political and familial through the potential of expanded photography. Photography has been a key discipline for exploration and documentation within Kingston School of Art since the turn of the twentieth century.
For further information on this exhibition, please contact Dr Judy Price, MA Photography Course Leader, Kingston School of Art: J.price@kingston.ac.uk