(New York, NY) We are pleased to present When Blurry Memories Awaken, an exhibition curated by Jinyi Freya Xu that brings together seven artists – Ruoyu Gong, Sharon Cheuk Wun Lee, Xinzi Luo, Wandi Ni, Hafsa Nouman, Haidong Yang, Jingyi Zhang. Rather than treating memory as a fixed archive of the past, the exhibition approaches it as a process shaped by perception, materiality, and temporal distance, one that continuously oscillates between recollection and imagination.
The physical presence are vessels of our own experiences, shaped and sustained by the totality of our memories. Every recollection constructs the architecture of our present self. Yet when we turn back toward the past, memory always appears in flux — both near and distant, shadow-like yet illusory. Blurry memory is not simply a residue of forgetting, but the inherent form through which memory exists. It reveals how our perception of the past is continuously defined by processes of layering, fading, and reconstruction.
In remembering, the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity begins to dissolve. Memory no longer reproduces fact; it becomes an act of re-creation, woven from perception, emotion, and imagination. The exhibition resists medium-based categorisation in favour of perceptual proximity. Painting, photography, and object-based works are placed in dialogue through shared concerns with surface, transparency, repetition, and trace.
Ruoyu Gong uses personal symbolism to explore psychological interiority and emotional perception. Sharon Cheuk Wun Lee works across photography, video, and installation, examining memory, historical rupture, and mediated vision through archival and cartographic approaches. Jingyi Zhang uses multi texure to explore perception through natural metaphors. Haidong Yang employs the photobook as a narrative and temporal structure to investigate alternative viewpoints and everyday power relations. Xinzi Luo works across painting, sculpture, and socially engaged practice, exploring utopian imagination and relational community structures. Hafsa Nouman examines memory, desire, and colonial histories through spatial thresholds, material surfaces, and embodied gestures in painting. Wandi Ni creates multi-panel paintings that reflect on shared memory between humans and non-humans, rooted in land, time, and ecological continuity.
In an image-saturated present defined by speed and clarity, When Blurry Memories Awaken insists on the value of uncertainty. Blurriness functions as a critical space, which allows memory to remain active, porous, and unresolved, reminding us that what shapes subjectivity most deeply is often what cannot be fully fixed or confirmed.
Exhibition Dates
March 22 – March 31, 2026
Artists
Ruoyu Gong
Sharon Cheuk Wun Lee
Xinzi Luo
Wandi Ni
Hafsa Nouman
Haidong Yang
Jingyi Zhang
Curator
Jinyi Freya Xu
Venue
Nugyen Wahed Gallery
504 E 12th St, New York, NY 10009
About Symora Art
Symora Art is a contemporary art institution exploring life, selfhood, and the structure of soul consciousness. Through exhibitions, publishing, and curatorial projects, we examine how personal experience intersects with social systems and inner worlds. Symora Art advocate for methodology-driven, interdisciplinary practices—combining art, philosophy, psychology, and the humanities—to explore art’s role in cognitive construction. Symora Art serves as a platform connecting artists, curators, researchers, and the public, fostering critical inquiry, multidimensional thinking, and reflective cultural production.
(text & photo courtesy of Symora Art )
