Windows Granted, curated by Zhiwu Zhu and Yurui Shi, explores the dynamics of seeing and being seen. The exhibition positions each artwork as a “window,” inviting viewers to confront their own visibility within a shared system of perception. It asks a central question: when we look, are we truly observing, or are we also being observed?
Hosted at The Handbag Factory from June 24 to 28, 2025, the exhibition transforms the former factory at 3 Loughborough Street into a spatial experiment in visual awareness. The site itself—its high windows, exposed brick walls, and polished concrete floors—retains the memory of industrial labor. Rather than filling this architecture with static displays, the curators embraced its raw character, designing a fluid spatial journey where artworks interact without rigid separation. Daylight through the skylights shifts across the floor, and with it, the works themselves seem to change, creating a living choreography of space, light, and presence.
The exhibition brought together 27 artists from six cultural backgrounds, presenting paintings, sculptures, installations, video, and performance. Delicate ink works and textured oil paintings unfold as fragments of memory or dream, while glass and wood structures expose fragile interdependencies, catching light and casting fleeting shadows. Digital interventions—mirrored surfaces, 3D-rendered forms, and symbolic fragments—blur the line between human and virtual, inviting slow, attentive movement. Video works spill across walls and floors, reframing the architecture as an immersive lens. On the opening night, subtle performances threaded through the space, turning the audience into active participants within the exhibition’s system of visibility.
Rather than telling viewers what to see, Windows Granted immerses them in the mechanics of perception. Visitors realize that every step, pause, and glance is part of the work. In turn, they are subtly observed—through reflective surfaces, shadow play, and the awareness of others moving in the same space. Here, presence itself becomes material.
This approach lightly touches on Michel Foucault’s reflections on visibility and the panopticon, without overwhelming the experience with theory. Observation and self-observation are in constant negotiation, allowing viewers to sense how perception is shaped by both personal attention and external frameworks.
By the end of the journey, Windows Granted offers no singular conclusion. Instead, it leaves a resonant awareness: art is not a static object, but a living system of relations between people, materials, and space. The exhibition opens a psychological window, where the act of looking becomes an act of reflection.
Featured Artists:
Usaydh Agha, Ziyang Chen, Jude Cui, Lena Danya, Brandon Hendrick, Minyue Hu, Jie Huang, Daye Kim, Tingting Li, Jingxi Li, Mengzhu Li, Jiayin Lu, Enxi Liu, Matilda Yueyang Peng, Icy Qiao, Yulai Xu, Cainy Yiru Yan, Yilina Yang, Yukio Yang, Zhe Yang, Liangqi Yao, Xiaoping Yu, Jichi Zhang, Jocelyn (Jinjin) Zhang, Ke Zhang, Xin Zhang, Mingzhuo Zheng
Special Guests for Opening Performance:
Bianco Li, Jorge Jobim, JAE-X
Curators:
Yurui Shi, Zhiwu Zhu
Curatorial Coordination:
Ziqi Li
