BOUNDED SPACE is delighted to announce that BOUNDER CELL will present the solo project Impromptu Rabbit Hole by artist Jiang Ruiying on August 6. 

Foreword
This is a colorful, logic-defying, rule-less wonderland of the night.

Someone is escaping from a fish tank. Eggshells become soil nurturing fish bones. A droplet of water rests on a grill while mosquitoes swirl and flutter in midair... This is the euphoric of an insomniac, everything is joyful and absurd. The night celebration is magnified to an extreme: free, yet perilous. It is as if Alice has fallen into the rabbit hole, a place brimming with unknown wonders.

These scenes are meticulously constructed by artist Jiang Ruiying through hand-knotted ropes, combined with found objects such as shoes, clothing, toys, egg models, fabric, spoons, and more. Since 2020, rope and thread have become Jiang's primary medium. The grave illness of a grandparent forced her to confront, for the first time, the inevitable and irreversible loss that life brings. From that moment, time grew elongated and cruel; within the once stable and happy family, she became acutely aware of shifts in family structure, emotions, and even lifestyle. She turned to the ropes she had played with as a child with her family—ropes that once brought them together, like a secret space in her memory where the noisy world stayed outside and a peaceful life dwelt within. Weaving has long transcended the boundaries of traditional craft, becoming a medium that carries memory, emotion, and bodily experience. Rooted in everyday life and the tracing of memory, Jiang Ruiying regards the knotting and arrangement of rope as a process of continuous growth, using rope-knitted constructions to "collect" family memories and the fleeting passage of time.

In her new work, Impromptu Rabbit Hole, rope knitting is no longer a commemorative act of "rebuilding an ideal home" but has evolved into a vehicle for Jiang Ruiying to process personal insomnia and anxiety. In contemporary fiber art, the act of weaving itself is a form of "embodied cognition”. Artist's body, touch, and repetitive movements collectively generate meaning, rather than merely serving formal purposes. This repetitive manual labor becomes a ritual for Jiang to digest restless emotions. The absurd inversions of logic, the everyday objects displaced into incongruous settings—these are the improvised releases of her inner agitation and imagination, as she lies wide-eyed in the depths of the night.

By Sun Evelyn