London, July 21–25, 2025 — Presented at Galleria Objects, 92 Brick Lane, London E1 6RL, Branches and Vessels: Ecologies of Kinship and Intimacy was Chinese artist Xinyue Liang’s recent solo exhibition, offering an evocative exploration of ceramics as a language for reimagining family. Over five days, the exhibition staged a dialogue between two interrelated bodies of work—the Jar Series and the Coral Series—through which Liang interrogated the architectures of kinship, women’s growth, and intergenerational continuity.
The Jar Series drew inspiration from the familiar silhouette of traditional Chinese storage vessels. Yet these works exceeded functionality, becoming repositories of memory and affect. Their textured surfaces resembled growth rings, wood grain, or fragments of domestic life, evoking layers of inherited stories. Some rims were deliberately irregular, signaling openness and permeability in communication, while other vessels stood tall and slender, embodying aspirations of continuity and resilience within family structures. Rather than containers for objects, they acted as material metaphors for parental care, lineage, and the tension between inheritance and rupture.
In contrast, the Coral Series brought ecological metaphors into the space of ceramics. Rendered in white porcelain, these branching structures resembled living organisms in constant interdependence. Their forms suggested both fragility and resilience, mirroring the delicate balance of family dynamics and, more specifically, women’s roles within them. Some works appeared as flourishing coral colonies, symbols of vitality and growth; others presented more abstract configurations, hinting at symbiosis, negotiation, and the collaborative trajectories of kinship. The whiteness of the clay amplified this tension—it was at once pure and exposed, simultaneously vulnerable and alive.
The exhibition design resisted linear storytelling. Instead, the jars and corals were placed in proximity, their forms echoing and contradicting one another, creating an environment that felt less like a gallery and more like an ecosystem. Visitors experienced kinship not as a fixed institution but as a porous, evolving organism—negotiated, fragile, and relational.
Crucially, Liang’s approach to ceramics did not rely on nostalgia or a straightforward revival of tradition. Instead, she positioned the medium as a site of translation, where materiality and abstraction could open questions about the contemporary Chinese family. Her works blurred the lines between the utilitarian and the symbolic, between personal memory and collective narrative, offering ceramics as both object and metaphor.
Ultimately, Branches and Vessels demonstrated that family is neither static nor unidirectional. It is, like coral reefs or vessels of clay, a structure that contains, leaks, and regenerates. Liang invited viewers to imagine kinship as an ecology: at once fragile and resilient, intimate yet permeable, rooted in tradition while constantly being rewritten in the present.
Exhibition Details
Branches and Vessels: Ecologies of Kinship and Intimacy
Solo exhibition by Xinyue Liang
Galleria Objects, 92 Brick Lane, London E1 6RL July 21–25, 2025
