Jiá Fèng 夹缝

Jiá Fèng 夹缝 annual programme

Troy House Art Foundation, 10-12 New Union Square, SW11 7AX, London

26 April 2022 - ongoing

Opening times: Mon-Fri 10:30am-5:30pm

Preview: Mon 25 April 2022, 5:30-8:30pm

Troy House Art Foundation annual programme Jiá Fèng 夹缝 will be opened to the public on 25th April 2022. Initiated by artist Yuan Gong, Jiá Fèng 夹缝 is curated to respond to current socio-political crises and human condition.

Jiá Fèng means a very limited space - it is referred to here as a concept which reflects the reality where people are recreating space to stay and survive in such a narrow room, where people are looking for the loss during their displacement, and where freedom is disappearing; then how do you find freedom through art? Jiá Fèng is like a society - a society that is losing its freedom. We are in the Jiá Fèng.

Jiá Fèng 夹缝 is a dynamic programme that encourages discussion on topics such as geopolitics, war and refugees, politics and art. Open to the public, the programme consists of three distinct projects: Points Art Residency Retrospective, Voices from Ukraine and Points Art Residency 2022. The projects will take shape in the form of exhibitions, screenings and residency open calls.

Jiá Fèng 夹缝 programme will start with Points Art Residency Retrospective exhibition. From Jinxi, China – an ancient water town located in Suzhou, Points Art Residency was initiated by Troy House Art Foundation in 2017. With outbreak of the global pandemic in 2020, Points was forced to suspend the residency programme and began to move to another location. The Points Art Residency Retrospective exhibition will present the works of four artists - Javier González Pesce, Yui Inoue, Yuya Suzuki and Lei Yan, in collaboration with S-AIR (JP) as well as a sound piece of a dialogue between Zhenhua Li and Yuan Gong on Gong’s poem “夹缝”. These works present the boundaries and connections between people and the world in the form of sound, video, installation and public art, and also attempt to respond to sketch out the potential universal ideal image and symbolic system of this world under the cross-cultural context. Not only do the works reflect the current reality, but construct connections between history and time, and places and events in a certain relation of space and time as well.

Unlike the retrospective, Voices from Ukraine is more of freedom lost in its progressive tense. Kyiv artist Nikita Kadan will be invited to the first phase of this project, where he is supposed to continuously transmit images, sounds and videos to the exhibition site in the form of an online residency for a month. In addition, a concurrent screening program will feature films on war, migration and borders.

Alongside the other projects, Points Art Residency 2022 is due to be officially launched in the new residency space in Wales and will invite three international artists (including an artist from Ukraine) to join its programme. Situated in Monmouth, the residency is located on the grounds of a seventeenth-century Troy House estate and is surrounded by extensive riverside land. In the backdrop of the main building with its complex and multi-dimensional history, a new home for art is being built.