Hive Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Drifting Bond”, a solo exhibition of artist Zhang Mingxuan, on view from 13 July to 13 August 2024 at Halls B and C of Hive Beijing. This exhibition will be Zhang’s second solo presentation after her debut at Hive Becoming in 2023. The show features her latest paintings and performance practices and is curated by Yu Fei.

Performance, led by the body, has consistently served as a prelude to Zhang Mingxuan’s practice. Even before the performance takes place, it is already present in the consciousness, incubating within the body and evoking the continuous creation of paintings. Zhang Mingxuan breaks out the space dedicated to the female body in the darkness of chaos, where the body is delicately and flexibly outlined in the flow, just like a dancer illuminated in the dark, revealing the eruption of vitality in silence with irreplaceable body language. The human figure portrayed by Zhang departs from the mundane beauty of smooth skin and refined proportions, it is filled with pleats and wrinkles in extreme folding and stretching, displaying twists and turns and unevenness everywhere. Sometimes, under the tension of extreme emotions, the struggling or contemplating body is even detached from the structure and proportion of the real body, yet it oddly stimulates the recognition and imagination of the real appearance of life.

The title of the exhibition, “Drifting Bond”, intends to capture the observation and scrutiny of the relationship between individuals and mother-daughter interactions from a female perspective, exploring and weaving the nuances of relationships linked by bloodline in multiple significance. Zhang Mingxuan left her work blank and open, invited her mother in, who dragged and splashed the brush dipped in thick paint across the anonymous bodies in the painting, sliding towards an unknown destination. The fluid bodies and the spattered hair intersect in the picture, with the unpredictability of life superimposed by their respective incidental occurrence and randomness, comprising a mirrored image of the mother-daughter relationship in reality that involves reciprocal involvement, mutual construction, and endless interdependence.

In a series of works that juxtapose the pairs, the multiplicity and complexity of relationships are quietly narrated through the body. Snuggling, embracing, pulling, and confronting, the two nude bodies nurture intimacy and trust in a limited and even cramped space, while simultaneously harbouring bonds and restrictions that are difficult to escape and sever. Zhang Mingxuan carefully balances the subtlety between the two, virtually removes any intergenerational differences in her representations of the body, and obscures any natural distinctions of age, physique, and strength, creating a more egalitarian and autonomous dialogue and exchange that might exist between mother and daughter. The sense of separation imparts both concrete and abstract states to the body in relation to each other, thus, the different experiences and situations of countless individuals can be incorporated and reimagined.