Titled Somatic Memory, the exhibition explores how bodily experience and perception shape the memory and cognition of individuals and collectives. Kang Jing imbues withered branches with the resilience of resin and the permanence of bronze, animating natural forms through surface textures to create a symbiosis between plant and flesh. Zheng Jiang builds a tower from beehives and molds circles from beeswax, his materials preserve the warmth of his father's labor, while the clarity of beeswax distills the essence of bloodline memory.

Somatic Memory

1. Body and Soul Am I

“Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only a word for something in the body”, spoken by Zarathustra. Philosophers have long regarded the body as a material entity, and in the field of neuroscience, the somatic system is also understood as a perceptual object, just like any other object in the world. When an artist references the “body” in their conceptual framework, they often refer to it from an objective perspective, as a composite sensory system. This spans the internal spaces (organs, blood, fluidity) to externally imposed sensations, pressures, and even destruction. Even when spirituality, it remains inseparable from the bodily medium.

For artist Kang Jing, the entry point is“bone”. He regards bone as a partial structure of the vertebrate body, whose coordination with other parts sustains life’s movement. From bone, he draws a conceptual parallel to trees, both embody a structural logic of living forms. Branches reach toward the sky, freely and vigorously competing for space. Kang Jing imbues withered branches with the resilience of resin and the permanence of bronze, animating natural forms through surface textures to create a symbiosis between plant and flesh. The site-specific installation Outline5#, takes the natural shape of a tree as the “origin” of spatial extension. It resembles an accidental 3D modeling operation where a tree branch's outline is mistakenly extruded to the walls of the gallery. Yet this “mistake” is materialized, producing a new spatial experience. This entire space originates from a “skeletal structure”. As the artist notes, “Branches are life’s skeleton, their mutually supportive yet competing growth resembles an embrace, life’s very fruit.” Thus, this space becomes both formal and aesthetic, corporeal and conceptual.

2. Somatic Memory

Psychologically, when bodily sensations or feelings are triggered, certain impulses in the body elicit automatic responses, either advancing or retreating. When habitual gestures or postures shift, accompanied by emotions of joy or distress, procedural memory is activated, and somatic memory is awakened. Artists are often drawn to labor-intensive processes, especially when they are emotionally charged. These corporal experiences are internalized as memory; by deconstructing such memory, artists access unique emotional resonances.

Zheng Jiang’s installation The longest way consists of three elements: a tower-like structure built from beehives, a video documenting a beekeeper repeatedly kneading a ball of beeswax, and circular beeswax forms. The work’s conception is rooted in a personal story: the artist’s father suffered a fall while tending to his beekeeping hobby. Through this artwork, Zheng explores themes of adversity and how individuals or communities confront it. He collected used, worn-out beehives to construct a monument-like edifice. The tower as an immersive space where the video documenting his father’s labor plays, an act of memory retrieval.

The beeswax disks, described by the artist as resembling “the shape of the sun,” underscore the transformative energy that arises from bodily endurance in the face of hardship. Through constructing towers from beehives and shaping beeswax into circles, the corporeal warmth of the previous generation is preserved within the material. The clarity of beeswax becomes a distillation of bloodline memory.

3. The Body Creates Everything

Is it thought that creates the artwork, or is it the bodily instinct and habits? Perhaps only by understanding the body can we understand the nature of creation. “Our body should not only be interpreted through momentary, unique, and self-contained experiences, but also through general and non-individual perspectives.” From a neuroscientific standpoint, all artistic imagination and creation may originate in body experience.

In his most recent painting series Morning Dew, Zheng Jiang uses zongbeng, a traditional Southern Chinese palm-fiber bed as his canvas. The minimalist imagery in these works is likened to “morning dew or nighttime stars.” The bed, as an object of direct bodily contact, invites not only visual pleasure but also physical comfort, rendering the body a space of imaginative projection. Meanwhile, in Kang Jing’s series Bony and Skeleton, a single branch or brushstroke becomes a generative line, shaping the vitality of matter. From surface to interior, his work anatomizes flesh to reveal the skeleton. The spatial voids filled by sculptural materials resemble growing muscle, inhabiting the “memory” of the bones and imbuing the body with strength. Through the body, spirit is forged; through the body, art is born. This is both method and meaning, medium and motive.