Fables of the Flesh: Rewriting Connection in “Chronicles of Intimacy”
Written by Hanni Huang
The exhibition Chronicles of Intimacy was organised by K:art Studio and curated by Yiming Pi, it features the diverse practices of thirty artists. The participants in this group exhibition include: Alena Saakian, Caijing Kuang, Chen Ren, Dora Siafla, Fanglin Luo, Fù Miàn, Gina Torchia, Jianjian Zixi Liu, Jingjing Xu, Julieta Tetelbaum, Lou Croff Blake & Madelyn Byrd, Manze Guo, Martina Licalsi, Milo Masonicic, Najme Kazazi, Olha Kalika, Qingyu Zheng, Pante’A Rezaei, Sadie Hennessy, Shenlu Liu, Suella Wynne, Valentina Sepúlveda, Valeria Solari, Valeriia Burliuk, Valentin Sismann, Vera da Costa, Ylenia-Gaia Dotti, Yuna Ding, and Yvette Yujie Yang.
In a contemporary landscape often defined by the fragility of “liquid love” and the commodification of desire, the exhibition Chronicles of Intimacy proposes a radical restructuring of how we perceive closeness. Moving beyond the domestic or the purely romantic, the curatorial vision employs “fables” as a methodological framework to reconstruct the multifaceted dimensions of intimacy. Intimacy here is not treated as a secluded private realm, but rather as a complex mechanism that transcends individual experience to reveal the disciplinary practices and power relations acting upon the body.
The exhibition grounds itself in a robust theoretical lineage. Drawing on Judith Butler’s assertion that the body is a socialised surface for inscription, the show positions the body as a dynamic interface. It is within this interface—simultaneously bearing the potential for dependency and the scars of discipline—that the exhibition’s strongest voices emerge.
Among the most compelling inquiries into this tension is Yuna Ding’s Love to fish. Ding creates a visual treatise on the paradox of love, questioning the fine line between affection and control. Inspired by Abraham Twerski’s parable, Ding asks whether what we call love is truly for the other or merely for the satisfaction they provide. Her work utilises the apple—a biblical symbol of temptation—to play on the Latin duality of malum, signifying both “apple” and “evil”. Through pliable, unstable materials that mirror the fluid nature of emotional labour, Ding builds spaces of quiet intensity where intimacy is shadowed by selfishness.
However, Ding’s exploration of care extends beyond the critique of control into a practice of collective healing. During the exhibition, her participatory workshop, “Careland,” invites mothers to reimagine the female body not as a site of burden, but as a “body as playground”. Moving from the solitary introspection of her sculpture, the workshop encourages participants to transform biological organs into whimsical amusement facilities—such as a “uterus maze” or “heart carousel”. By combining painting, printmaking, and 3D collage, these individual reimaginings are assembled into a collective “Careland Map”. Here, Ding shifts the narrative from the “evil” of possessive love to the joy of shared vulnerability, empowering local communities to visualise their inner emotional landscapes as tangible, navigable spaces of care.
While Ding navigates the interpersonal and maternal, Jingjing Xu situates the struggle for intimacy within the weight of heritage. Her work, Under the Veil, extends the inquiry of repetition to the specific condition of East Asian women. For Xu, the “veil” is not merely a garment but a metaphor for social and cultural layers—enclosing walls and immovable boulders—that women must confront. She navigates the simultaneous desire for artistic freedom and the crushing expectations of family. Through experimental moving image, Xu posits creation itself as a call to reawaken desire, opening fissures of freedom within seemingly unbreakable cycles of repetition.
Shifting the gaze from the social structure to the ethereal, Shenlu Liu’s Woven Sigils: The Crystal Resonance Network explores what the curators describe as “more-than-human intimacy”. Liu channels crystal energies through embroidery and beading, creating visible “sigils” on black fabric. The work features thirteen luminous nodes linked by silver “veins,” forming an organic network that transforms visual vibration into atmosphere. By incorporating flowing water and hanging bells, Liu invites the viewer to step inside and resonate, fostering a layered purification. It is a profound example of how the exhibition expands intimacy into an energy field of affective currents.
Surrounding these central pillars is a chorus of voices that further fracture and expand the exhibition’s narrative. The visceral reality of the body as a site of resistance is a recurring theme. Qingyu Zheng offers a stark performance in Mama Horse, licking butter off iron railings to expose the entanglement of intimacy and humiliation , while Fù Miàn’s dance film Red Veil traces the body’s journey from clarity to entanglement. Fanglin Luo uses pink-toned garments to evoke the maternal body , and Olha Kalika transforms the figure into a vessel for inner emotional states.
The architecture of memory also plays a crucial role. Suella Wynne stitches trauma into resilience using her childhood home’s imagery , while Jianjian Zixi Liu reimagines pipelines as living organisms navigating security and freedom. Valeriia Burliuk’s Spring uses organic growth as a metaphor for renewal. The exhibition concludes with works that dissolve the self into the environment: Manze Guo’s Vacuum dissolves the self into Tokyo’s pulse , Gina Torchia dialogues with connection through geometry , and Yvette Yujie Yang explores “ecological grief”. From Valentina Sepúlveda’s materialisation of time to Pante’A Rezaei’s folk tales and Martina Licalsi’s cyanotypes, the works collectively refuse a singular definition of closeness.
Ultimately, “Chronicles of Intimacy” succeeds because it does not offer a closed book. As the curatorial statement suggests, this is an “unfinished collection of fables”. By presenting intimacy as an open narrative space—interwoven with social discipline, energy flows, and the fluidity of desire—the exhibition invites the audience, much like the mothers in Careland, to intervene and rewrite the possibilities of love.
