Borderlines ran 29 December 2025 – 4 January 2026 at Fitzrovia Gallery, London

Borderlines was a contemporary group exhibition curated by ArtFlow Studio that brought together international and emerging artists whose practices explore themes of transition, identity, and perception. The exhibition reflected on the fluid boundaries between cultures, disciplines, and lived experience, examining how personal and collective narratives are formed at moments of tension, overlap, and transformation.

Through painting, installation, video, photography, and live performance, Borderlines created a space for dialogue around liminality and movement—both conceptual and physical—inviting audiences to reflect on the evolving conditions of contemporary life. The exhibition was held from December 29, 2025 to January 4, 2026 at Fitzrovia Gallery in London. 

Special artists featured included Tonghe Yang, Hongru Zhang, Xiaobin Zhang, who were recipients of the previous ArtFlow Prize. The opening evening featured a live art performance by Cathy Tsang, a Hong Kong–born, London-based flautist.

About the Artflow Prize

This exhibition featured the ArtFlow Prize, established by ArtFlow Studio to support and encourage outstanding artistic practice. The first prize winner received a £200 artistic award, recognising both creative excellence and commitment to artistic exploration. In addition, two artists were selected for a featured interview with JustArt Newspaper, offering further visibility and critical engagement with their work. Through the ArtFlow Prize, ArtFlow Studio aims to foster emerging talent and sustain meaningful artistic creation—reflecting the founding vision of the platform to build long-term support structures for artists.

The First Prize was awarded to Sarah Muwanga, in recognition of the sensitivity and depth of her artistic practice. The Merit Awards have been presented to Judy Clarkson and Jianqiang (Vincent) Xia, acknowledging the strength and originality of their works. Through the ArtFlow Prize, ArtFlow Studio continues its commitment to supporting outstanding artists and encouraging sustained, thoughtful artistic creation — core values that have guided the platform since it's founding.

Curatorial Team

ArtFlow Studio
Curator: Hongqian Zhang

Partners

The JustArt Newspaper Club

Senvo Future Education

Volunteers

Tizi Pu; Wenxi Yu; Jingxiang Wang

Participating Artists

Olesia Podyman

Bahar Talebi Najafabadi: Halo Ascent (2025) is an oil painting rooted in emotional and sensory experience. For Bahar Talebi Najafabadi, painting functions as an intimate dialogue between mood, colour, and gesture.

Chaeyeon Kang: 2.8 days (2025) is an intimate work that explores time, fragility, and emotional residue through subtle material intervention. Using food colouring on photographic paper combined with ink drawing, Chaeyeon Kang allows colour to seep, stain, and fade, echoing the passage of a specific yet elusive duration.

Claudi Piripippi: Morbid Embodiment (2023) is a digital video work that explores transcendence through the fluid passage between body and spirit.

Danyi Shen & Hongyan Lin: Orivane is a biomimetic soft-technology device that explores how assistive design can support overlooked yet essential bodily actions.

Daria Yang Du: Arts Deconstructive Utopia (2022/2025) reimagines San Francisco’s Pier 70 as a transitional landscape where art, design, and public life intersect. Through drawings and 3D-printed models, Daria Yang Du proposes a series of temporary, movable spatial “machines” that activate the waterfront with minimal intervention.

Feiyun Yao

Geoff Gunby: Salome (2024) reinterprets the biblical narrative of John the Baptist through a contemporary lens of identity and transformation.

Guan Yang: Rongjie (2025) explores the dissolution of boundaries between the human body, nature, and collective existence. Through flowing lines and cellular textures rendered in woodcut and digital print, Sukie Guan interweaves the female form with earth and trees, suggesting a seamless communion between humanity and the natural world.

Guo Cheng: In Someone Else’s Shoes (2024) examines the limits of empathy through an absurd act of role reversal.

Hannah Yağmur Gürsoy: Pulse of the Olive Tree (2025) presents the olive tree as a symbol of rootedness, memory, and endurance.

Hui Zhang: Re-Growth (2025) examines renewal through the lens of trash aesthetics, transforming discarded materials into a quiet metaphor for regeneration. Using recycled denim fabric and natural branches, Hui Zhang brings industrial remnants into dialogue with organic forms, redefining ideas of waste and value.

Huiyuan Zhang: Drifting Island (2025) is a sculptural installation that explores a suspended state between nature and construction.

Jianqiang Xia: Beneath the Ashes: The Pulse of Forgotten Matter (2025) is a ceramic work composed of reclaimed clay sediments, shaped through cycles of collapse, fusion, and transformation. Guided by the unpredictable chemistry of fire, the surface forms rugged, landscape-like textures that evoke eroded earth and emerging growth.

Jenny Ping Lam Lin: Sheep Mind (2024) is a photographic work drawn from the series Farm Hierarchy, which observes farm animals as a mirror of human social structures. Using documentary photography and multiple exposure, Jenny Ping Lam Lin presents an apparently neutral depiction of animal life while revealing the symbolic hierarchies imposed by human systems of control.

Jing Ji: Ligne de Fuite (2025) is a photographic project that explores liminal states of existence through narrative imagery and the zine format. Structured in three chapters—Cold Mountain, Dead Water, and White Night—the work reflects shifting emotional conditions of confusion, sorrow, desire, and alienation.

Jingchao Yang: Churning Seas (2024) is a moving-image work that examines the vulnerability of marine ecosystems under climate change.

Jingchen Han: Held (2025) reflects on the fragile boundary between aspiration and survival experienced by the artist after graduation in London.

Jorden Leung: Photobomb (2024) is a photographic work that plays with interruption, chance, and the instability of visual focus.

Judy Clarkson: Jahlene (2018) explores cultural identity and self-knowledge through the motif of reflection. Rather than presenting a direct portrait, Judy Clarkson depicts the subject only through a reflected image, emphasising the mediated ways in which identity is formed and perceived.

Kasen Ko: Until the Meaning Disappears (2025) reflects on self-exhaustion within an achievement-driven society, where overload is often mistaken for growth.

Liron Donovan: It’s Not My Fault You Make Terrible Bananas (2025) playfully examines the tension between digital image-making and material process. Through repeated scanning, drawing, and printing of banana imagery onto Japanese Washi paper, Liron Donovan treats the surface as a “negative film,” embracing imperfection and texture.

Lu Shan: Glimmer (2025) uses glass as both structure and metaphor to explore the subtle dynamics of human connection. Through intersecting lines and coloured nodes, Lu Shan evokes emotional networks formed by moments of intimacy, distance, and mutual support.

Manze Guo: Pulse (2025) is a video work that explores rhythm as a sensory experience beyond sight. Set within a fictional desert landscape, the piece follows a solitary traveler as light, breath, and movement merge into a perceptual rhythm.

Meishan Zhao: Solitude (2025) envisions the female body as a landscape of endurance and quiet strength. Emerging like stone from an atmosphere of stillness, the figure embodies both vulnerability and permanence.

Sarah Muwanga: No. 655 (2025) captures an intimate, fleeting moment of rest shared across generations. Through warm tones and expressive brushwork, Sarah Muwanga evokes a sense of everyday humanity, focusing on quiet connection and care.

Sean BW Parker: Mars: The Bringer of War (2025) is an impressionistic “music painting” inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite. Created while listening repeatedly to the composition, the work translates its intensity, rhythm, and dramatic tension into visual form.

Shuyang (Qinyue) Chen: Cocoon (2024) explores transformation, freedom, and emotional fluidity through a sculptural combination of metal and translucent 3D-printed material. The work captures the moment after a butterfly has left its shell—where absence becomes a quiet form of presence.

Tianyu Ren: The Quiet of Unseen Light (2023) explores the shifting relationship between urban space and nature through mixed-media collage.

Xiwen Xu

Xiaoyi Sun: The Ripple of a Gift (2024) is a video work that examines shifting boundaries within human relationships through the cultural practice of gift-giving.

Yiling Cao

Yilun Liu: Paris Archive (2025) examines the unstable boundary between authenticity and simulation in digitally mediated experience. Originating as an online performance staged entirely through Google Street View, Yilun Liu presented an imagined journey to Paris via social media “travel logs,” prompting viewers to oscillate between belief and doubt.

Yinuo Pan: Our Stories (2025) explores history through the lives of ordinary, unnamed individuals. Working with digital prints on paper, Yinuo Pan gathers everyday objects sourced from antique shops, second-hand stores, and personal experience, using them as entry points to uncover hidden human narratives.