Cave of the Night
Welcome to the Cave of the Night, where shadows unveil the personal memories, fragile balance of power, and unseen forces. We have prepared a list of private notes from artists for you. As you navigate the cave, let your body guide you freely. Imagine that you have tentacles. Think you are in a cave that responds to you. If things feel out of touch or lack of meaning, remember that’s ok. That’s part of the night stroll.
Kindly approach the cave with curiosity and care.
Kindly approach the cave with curiosity and care.
Photo by Hao Zeng & Jingyi Zhu
Floating Landscape. Bonan Li (2024).
Polyester, nylon, silk, metallic
I would collect lotus leaves and observe them as they slowly withered in my childhood. The natural essence they embodied, infused with the vastness of the universe, evoked a sense of timelessness. By observing the decay of the lotus leaves, I came to deeply experience the connection between myself, nature, and the world. However, in repeatedly attempting to interpret a withered lotus leaf through the lens of human culture and society, I often overlooked a certain strangeness, an unfamiliar, unassimilable sense of solid presence—something that resisted integration into the lived environment.
This inherent “rootedness” of natural objects in the world—their presence and the dimension of being—often pushed me beyond the confines of my understanding of the world, compelling me to explore, with heightened curiosity, the unperceived reality of the world’s domain—a realm full of cracks, voids, and chaotic “nothingness.” As I matured and experienced the death of loved ones, I was confronted with death as a constant presence within the continuum of life, akin to the true nature of the world’s domain. This realm presented itself as an absolute void, filled with cracks and ruptures in the continuity of existence. These experiences profoundly impacted me, awakening within a desire to express this state of void, the blank fissures in the fabric of life, and the presence of death that flows through the gaps of the living world.