( ) in the Mountain is an artist collective consisting of a group of friends who graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag in 2022. While facing the reality of our precarious situations as international emerging artists, we were brought up out of a need for a space that allowed growth. Our place welcomes what is often omitted, hidden, or swiped away, giving ourselves and others a space for the quiet, for all that often does not make its way to the forefront, as well as an attempt to bring our art practices closer to our daily lives. We were established in August 2022, and are currently based at De Besturing, an artist studio complex in Den Haag.

         

I studied graphic design for four years in China before but I didn’t like it then I came to the Netherlands to study another four years for fine art, and now I live and work in The Hague.

I have a deep interest in personal narrative storytelling. Through writing, storytelling,
and object-image-making, to unfold a unique landscape with ostensibly childlike innocence; it would, however, gently discloses many of life’s raw truth. Holding the words is the same way hold clay or wood or a butterfly. Through them, an inner space is thus constructed and the narrative extends linguistic connections, both in terms of distance in space and time. I think I’m more image-oriented than concept-focused, I’m not good at abstract thinking, and I tend to think allegorically and metaphorically rather than rationally, which is the part I’m good at. In this sense, to make sculptures is the same to write a novel.

In the recent work ‘The day, we left early in the morning to see the waterfall.’，I started from my father’s dream-his future house. From a dialogue with him, dives me into memories and shapes a poetic space. The house becomes the imagery in which the memories stay that we can enter in and touch it, to interact with the house that belongs to us, or never belongs to us. Through the ‘ experience of imagination’, the house exists not only to provide a space for perception and memory to meet but also to bring ‘awareness’ to the ‘back to self’. And imagining longing for the house of the future was like the day, I went with my parents to see the waterfall. I could smell the water floating in the air, the stone steps filled with water that we need to be careful of every step, but the waterfall is still so far away.