Safe Space

 

Safe Space explores the evolving concept of belonging—both personal and collective—through the work of twelve Asian artists working across diverse mediums. The exhibition engages with the idea of the “safe space,” a term shaped by literature, philosophy, and the social sciences. While often imagined as a refuge from external pressures, the safe space is also a site of tension—capable of both nurturing and limiting expression.

Responding to this complexity, Safe Space offers a globally-minded perspective that challenges simplistic understandings of comfort, inclusion, and identity. Through sculpture, video, painting, and installation, the participating artists examine how spaces of safety are formed, disrupted, and redefined within varying cultural and political contexts. The exhibition raises critical questions about who feels safe, under what conditions, and at what cost—foregrounding the paradoxes embedded in spaces we often take for granted.

 

The exhibition takes as its launching point the famous line from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, wherein Cleopatra proclaims her lover Antony as her sole sanctuary, consecrating him as an idealized "safe space" insulated from the world's chaos. However, this romantic literary conception represents just one perspective within a larger contemporary theoretical discourse surrounding the multifaceted concept of the "safe space." Contemporary multidisciplinary research and critical inquiry have scrutinized how these designated "safe spaces," while purportedly nurturing individual identities and communal belonging, may conversely induce an insular mindset of "groupthink" that suppresses perspectives deviating from collectively accepted norms.

 

The artists in Safe Space grapple with these varied dimensions, navigating the oscillation between desires for community and the dangers of uncritical conformity. Their works decode the languages, rituals, and social norms at play within environments positioned as safe havens. Photography, paintings, sculptures, and multimedia installations plumb the psychological complexities - realms of liberation and subjugation - precipitated by membership in "safe" group settings. Through this multifaceted approach, the exhibition aims to open an intersectional dialogue around the construction of belonging across geographic, cultural, and ideological borders.

Artists

Chuyuan Ning, Yucheng Liao, Rosie Kim, Masha Lyass, Jingyao Huang, Chunbum Park, Qipeng Deng, Doi Kim, Anna Danyang Song, Luna Hao, Zelene Jiang Schlosberg, Kaiming Yang

Curator

Hongzheng Han