A Thousand Plateaus Gallery is pleased to announce Chen Qiulin's solo exhibition"Garden” at Pingshan Art Museum in Shenzhen from May 30 to August 30, 2026. Curated by Karen Smith, the exhibition features a selection of the artist's worksfrom the past two decades, encompassing diverse media such as video, photography, and installation. The exhibition begins with Chen Qiulin's 2002 photographic work titled Home, as an entry into her consistent use of her hometown—Wanzhou, Chongqing—as a source of inspiration for her artworks.

A close look at Chen Qiulin's early works reveals a genuine feeling for the reality of daily life, from early in her career. Especially, her unique and moving perception of the concept of "home," which is concentrated in her video works Farewell (2002), Colorful stripes (2006), and Garden (2007). During this period, Chen Qiulin's workswere closely related to the process of urbanization, but from the first transcendedasimple reflection of the social status quo or individual suffering. Using motifs that directly affect people's senses and memory, such as opera, clothing, and flowers, Chen Qiulin shows how the relationship between individual destiny and the transformation of social structure evolves from an initial anticipation to entanglement, and finally to a gradual shift towards new lives. The works featurefamiliar streets from the artist's memory; the once rushing river has becomeascalm as a lake. Beneath these silent appearances, millions of migrants began their new lives in other places, and millions of high-rise buildings rose amidst acacophony of shouts and cheers. As her hometown became a vast constructionsite, it was but a tiny microcosm of the broader redevelopment along the river banks. Chen Qiulin chose to be a sensitive observer, using his own eyes and feelings torecord what happened around "home".

This delicate understanding also permeates Chen Qiulin's multi-dimensional project One day, completed between 2014 and 2016. Here, she extends her observation of "home" to the more remote Dong villages in southeastern Guizhou, observing and exploring the kind nature of the women living on the land and their reverence for tradition, qualities which she incorporated into the protagonist of thefilm, allowing her to wander through the village alleys like a secluded orchid in a valley, revealing, through various scenes, ancient traditions that have beenmarginalized yet cannot be abandoned in the depths of modern civilization. Through a combination of media such as video, photography, and installation, theexhibition presents her observations and reflections on the lives of Dong women in a dimly lit exhibition hall—the closed environment has shaped the taciturn nature of the women living there, and their monotonous life is not fate, but has become an inescapable destiny.

Since settling in Chengdu in 2002, Chen Qiulin still regularly returns to her hometown of Wanzhou. Mint (2018) is about one of those returns to the placewhere she lived as a child, to revisit her former companions. This project is not merely a study of ordinary individuals caught in the torrent of history, but a kind of recollection—an intangible, indelible memory, the essence condensedfromeverything in the past, where the passage of time carries immense, unspeakablesorrow. If Chen Qiulin's earlier video works were a farewell to her hometown, thenin Mint, she hopes to test her own memories, to see how they align with reality. Here, Chen Qiulin asks the existentialist questions: Who are we? Howdidwebecome what we have become? What shapes our perceptions of the future? What impact has time had on them and on us? How is our identity formed? What are our individual characteristics?

As core components of the two titular installations, the short films One day and Mint will be screened on the fifth floor of the Pingshan Art Museum. A highlight of the exhibition on the sixth floor is a fragment from Chen Qiulin's new work, which is still in the creation stage and is being shown for the first time. She has givenit the evocative title There is a tree on the other side of the sea (2026-in progress).

Each work presented in the exhibition "Garden" exudes a poetic quality intheordinary, reflecting Chen Qiulin's deep concern for the nuanced meaning of "home" in different contexts. "Simplicity, ordinariness, and poetry" define "home" and the subtle nuances of Chen Qiulin's contemplation on existence and belonging. "Garden" invites viewers to reflect on what kind of places, memories, and tranquil moments have shaped us into who we are today, allowing us to live as comfortablyas if we were "at home."