Ruonan Shen’s “Dreamland” series is a fascinating study of a strained yet fragile relationship between the artificial constructs of humanity and the natural forces that rule our natural world. This series of long-exposure photographs, which comes from the Hequ Village farming areas of Pingshan County, Hebei Province, China, is a poetic conversation between the physical and the spiritual, stillness and movement, reality and surrealism.

But at a second look, the photos draw the viewer into a dreamlike space that seems frozen in time while still succumbing to the swerve of energy. The long-exposure method animates these static landscapes, transforming the invisible forces of wind and water and even fiery red molten lava into vaporous ghostly forms that drift like lost souls across the fields. These ghostly mist-blue swathes in the first image conjure the threshold between the material and the immaterial — the delicate beating of nature held in a form that lay beyond ordinary sight. The second image, on the other hand, adds a bright tip of color in the same outdoor scene. That translucent, kite-shaped body bursting with brilliant reds, greens, and blues apparently hovers just above the earth with a spectral grace. As though the man-made or artificial, represented in this case by a man-made kite or net, has been animated by its exposure to the very forces of nature. The tension between something as rooted as a forest as backdrop and this ephemeral, brilliant apparition accentuates the tension of permanence and temporariness; control and distraction. 

“Dreamland” offers an intense meditation on how human manipulations — signified via installations, or reed-stitched objects — engage with the wildness of nature. Shen’s art represents this unfolding of an experience in mutual vision not as a straightforward binary or oppositional relationship, but in the nuanced layers in between conflict and peace. These vague, ghostlike images produced by the prolonged exposure are metaphors for this struggle. At the same time, they are imprints of natural tribulations — wind, water, air — and the sight of human fabrications under them. In the photographs, at least the unnatural does not overtake or destroy the natural; they cohabit in an unstable equilibrium, indefinite and blurred, their boundaries. This complex equilibrium of form and sequence reflects concerns in today’s world about the environment and the human effect on ecosystems. Shen’s work invites reconsideration, in other words, of what the idea of “nature” might be — not a bucolic, untouched realm, but rather a world deeply imprinted by human hands and yet also susceptible to natural rhythms.

One of the most effective things about “Dreamland” is its use of time and motion. By this long-exposure method of working, Shen stretches moments into extended episodes, encouraging a meditative gaze that penetrates beneath the surface. In the first, the swirling blue mist seems to function as a sort of visual soundwave — an echo of the wind’s otherwise invisible presence — while in the second, the intense, dancing colors of the kite feel like an effusion of life in a static world. The stillness of the surrounding landscape (a hushed field surrounded by dark dense woods) grounds the images, but the active, semi-translucent shapes defy our understanding of space and mass. These things generate a sense of tension and release, implying that hidden within that which seems still there is a flow of becoming never at rest.

Hequ Village of Hebei Province, which serves as a physical backdrop, becomes more than a mere location — it takes an active role in the story. The place is itself liminal: it exists at the cusp between old world rural existence and the inevitable push of modernity and industrialization. Shen’s images don’t just record this place; they turn it into a stage for a far weightier inquiry into existence. The village’s open fields and surrounding woods represent boundaries between the natural wilderness and human dwelling, tradition and innovation, the permanent and the impermanent. With her painter’s eye, Shen turns this locale into a universal metaphor for the precarious lashings all communities feel in an increasingly shifting world.

Emerging artist Ruonan Shen, who has been studying Interior Design at University of Arts London in London, applies her fine-tuned conceptual practice to the medium of photography. While her main interest is in conceptual portraiture and constructed identity—particularly with a focus on gender and transformation—her contribution to “Dreamland” proves there is more to her than meets the eye as she deftly handles environmental and spatial issues. She relies upon staged environments and deliberate image creation that were derived from the minimal, theaterlike artifice of these interiors, apparent even in this series. The pictures are a constructed reality which express more than they show. They are meditative practices of image-creation as much as they are acts, holding intimacy and distance, inviting viewers into conversations with the scenes that seem both quiet and powerful.

And while “Dreamland” is a show about landscape and nature, it subtly reverberates with questions about identity and performance that animate Shen’s wider artistic inquiry. The man-made apparitions are visual shape-shifters in the natural world, switching identities on the fly as they respond to the elements. Using long exposure as a metaphor for change, she blurs lines, as Shen explores gender fluidity and self-presentation in her portraits. As the work crosses genre barriers—between environmental and bodily organism—it generates another layer of feeling, and these visualizations become spaces of insecurity, force and incoherence. For better or worse, identity works like landscape — constructed but also fluid, shaped by external forces but inherently resistant to fixed definition.

The real power of the series is its capacity to sit absurdity and beauty next to one another. It may seem surreal or nonsensical for a transmuted, man-made kite or net to evaporate into a rainbow-colored ghost over a field. But through Shen’s eyes, this absurdity is a poetic metaphor of coexistence and interreliance. Such tension invites reflection on how man-made creations exert themselves on nature, and how nature reasserts upon or intervenes in the work of man. It forces the anthropocene gaze and provokes us to acknowledge that nature is not a neutral setting for our deeds, but an actor amid them.

“Dreamland” is, finally, an invitation — a visual meditation that invites viewers to revisit some of the complications of modern existence. It’s a show that does not provide easy answers but does create a space where you can ponder how humanity charts its way within the intricate connectivity that nourishes life. In a world of gathering environmental decay and galloping technology, Shen’s photographs call to mind the delicate beauty at the skin-over point of those forces. They call us to reconsider our identity — not as conquerors of nature but rather as inhabitants of a common ecosystem in which harmony is attainable but only if we act to sustain it.

Ruonan Shen’s “Dreamland” is a hauntingly resonant series that rises above its visual splendor to address fundamental questions about art, identity, the natural world, and humans’ place in it. And with long exposure photography, it picks up traces not just of images but of time and experience: threads stretching with strands of tension, change and poetic ambiguity. It is a major addition to the current visual art conversation; technology and tradition, stillness and movement, artifice and nature speak in a deeply moving, haunting, beautiful and unforgettable way. “Dreamland” is more than just a body of photographs — it is a gentle but potent treatise on the unhinging equilibrium that constitutes our world.

Jingyun Guan (b. 2001) is a Chinese artist based in London. Since beginning their practice in 2019, they have moved fluidly across media, evolving from photography into fine art. Their 2024 series marks a significant point in their creative trajectory, offering a deeply personal yet theoretically engaged body of work. Here, Guan transforms personal trauma into artistic expression, exploring body politics, gender identity, and cultural belonging with a distinctly poetic sensibility.

The roots of Guan’s 2024 series reach back to their adolescence. As a melancholic teenager walking two kilometers home from school each day, a chance encounter with a rotting sausage by the roadside became the unlikely seed for what would later grow into On My Way Home, a central work in the current series.

On My Way Home exemplifies Guan’s material approach. Tights, cotton wool, meat hooks, and silicone — everyday materials — take on layered symbolic significance. Flesh-toned, vascular forms appear both animate and suspended, reminiscent of medical specimens, while womb-like contours evoke both safety and abandonment. Guan sets up stark material contrasts: soft hosiery against cold steel hooks, warm flesh tones beside sharp edges. In this tension, the fragility and resilience of embodied existence emerge.

This sensitivity to material recurs throughout the series. Guan gravitates towards skin-like textures that simultaneously invite touch and suggest danger. In The Queer Goddess’s Body, melted candle wax drips onto tights; in Growing New Hand from the Nerves, a wax palm appears to sprout from red silk. Across these works, Guan sustains a dialogue between tenderness and severity.

The Queer Goddess’s Body carries this conversation into even more layered registers. The work features the head of an infant toy adorned with drag makeup, atop a body of tights stuffed with cotton wool — innocent yet provocative, fragile yet powerful. Beyond simply challenging gender norms, Guan dissolves boundaries between the sacred and profane, purity and desire. Divinity, in their vision, transcends human gender categories, becoming something more inclusive and fluid.

Color operates as an emotional register across these works. Flesh pink evokes bodily warmth and vulnerability; blood red signals both trauma and passion; pure white hints at purification and rebirth. In Date With The Snail, these chromatic strategies deepen: dreamlike blue-purple backgrounds meet warm-toned organic forms, producing a surreal intimacy. Referencing Zhuangzi’s “butterfly dream,” Guan blurs the lines between reality and illusion.

The series also sustains what Guan calls a “childish style.” Yet this is no naïve aesthetic. In An Insatiable Crack, for instance, a red fissure reads both as wound and portal. Guan writes: “My hand passes through your hair, leaving ghostly touch; I pass through your body, opening a crack in my body…” — revealing a nuanced understanding of intimacy as both penetration and vulnerability, possession and surrender.

Throughout their work, Guan employs a distinct “metamorphic aesthetic.” From the fleshy forms of On My Way Home, to the suspended limbs in Pose Pose Pose, to hybrid creatures across their paintings, they deploy transformation and recombination, creating forms thwhatat are simultaneously familiar and unsettling. This metamorphosis does not seek sensationalism but disrupts fixed ways of seeing, inviting viewers into a space of cognitive ambiguity.

In their performance My Mom’s Home, Guan extends personal narrative into cultural reflection. Through bodily movement, they navigate the entangled love-hate dynamics of mother-daughter relationships within East Asian contexts — patterns of emotional interdependence that resonate not only in family but also in their cultural positioning as a Chinese artist working within Western art discourse.

What distinguishes Guan’s practice is their ability to transform intimate experiences into works that carry universal resonance. Within contemporary queer art, Guan’s voice offers a distinct contribution. Drawing on both material and bodily sensitivity, they infuse their work with Eastern poetics. Their practice reminds us that identity is never fixed but multiple, fluid, and open to possibility. In navigating the tensions between tenderness and severity, Guan exemplifies how contemporary art can confront the complexities of lived reality.

Lin Ye is an illustrator bridging continents and emotional worlds. Originally from China and now based in London, she works at the intersection of culture, childhood, and visual storytelling. Her journey into picture books began with a science title on the coronavirus, co-authored during the early days of the pandemic. The book quickly gained widespread recognition in China for its clarity and emotional sensitivity.

Seeking to deepen her craft, Lin pursued a master’s degree in children’s book illustration at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since completing her studies, her work has earned critical acclaim. She won the Illustration Commendation Award in the FAB  prize held by the famous British publishing house Faber.

Expedition of Clement

In Expedition of Clement, Lin Ye crafts a visually arresting fable on education, control, and the delicate line between nurture and surveillance. Set in a quiet, symbolic forest ruled by a one-eyed god draped in moss green, the story follows two children as they are locked, quite literally, into lives shaped by their parents’ choices.

Ye’s illustrations are haunting and warm in equal measure. Her digital textures mimic hand-painted softness, and her characters hover between the whimsical and the uncanny. Their asymmetry is intentional, their gestures reserved yet telling. Keys hang like promises. Trees watch with knowing limbs. In this forest, education is not just a system but a spell cast on young minds.

The story gently unravels into a parable of divergence. One child accepts the lock, choosing a structured learning path and expected obedience. The other resists, stepping off the path, their life spiralling into curiosity, chaos, and self-guided discovery. Ye never moralizes. Instead, she observes. Her art lets the forest breathe around each choice, showing the cost of both routes, the safety of rules versus the wildness of freedom.

This is not just a book for children. It is a meditation for adult questioning where teaching ends and control begins. Expedition of Clement is Lin Ye at her most precise, emotionally attuned, narratively restrained, and visually poetic. It is a quiet masterpiece on the tension between expectation and exploration.

Your picture book Expedition of Clement explores the impact of traditional Chinese educational values. What challenges did you face in translating such a culturally specific topic into a universally understandable story, and how did you ensure it remained accessible to international audiences?

The main challenge I faced when writing Expedition of Clement  was how to truly reflect Chinese education while making the story avoiding being too specific or ironic. When designing characters and plots, if people are used directly as story characters, the diversity of races may produce obvious specific meanings, limiting the reader’s understanding of the story. For this reason, I chose to use animals as characters, using allegorical narratives to abstract and neutralize cultural characteristics, so that the story can convey the universal theme of “conflict between personal ideals and external expectations” across cultures. This treatment not only helps to highlight the universality of the story, but also facilitates the understanding and resonance of readers around the world.

You’ve experimented with a wide range of illustration styles, from realism to abstraction. How do you decide which visual style best suits each story or concept you’re working on?

When I am creating a story, choosing a visual style is a decision that is closely tied to the story content. For example, for the story I Want to Be a Shark, since the setting is in an ocean full of marine life, an environment that it self has a strong visual impression, a realistic style would be more accurate in expressing the story content and avoid the misunderstandings or orientation issues that an abstract style might bring. 

On the other hand, for The Expedition of Clement, this was an abstract concept based on reflections on Chinese-style education. In order to avoid the misunderstandings that might arise from direct expression, I chose to set the story in a forest, and to express the core theme vividly and vividly through the animalized protagonists and the addition of some fantasy elements, such as the mysterious key god. In this way, I was able to choose the most appropriate visual style based on the emotional and thematic depth of the story.

In I Want to Be a Shark, you look at themes of self-acceptance and identity through a blowfish character. Can you walk us through your creative process in balancing light-hearted storytelling with such an important human message?

When I was writing I Want to Be a Shark, I decided to use animals as the main characters and realistic illustrations to unfold the story after I finished writing the story. The character setting of the blowfish came from a documentary about marine life that I watched. The unique defense mechanism of the blowfish – inflating itself when in danger – aroused my interest and inspired me to choose it as the protagonist of the story. I was attracted by the unique and interesting way of survival of this creature and decided to incorporate this appreciation of individual uniqueness into the story.

I need to acknowledge the complexity of the task of balancing the light-hearted storyline with such an important human message: on the one hand, the story needs to be attractive enough for young readers to follow the plot; on the other hand, the story should not be too simplified or misleading so as not to weaken its educational significance.

To achieve this balance, I added humorous and warm dialogues and expressive character designs to the narrative, so that the story can remain interesting while also inspiring readers to think deeply about self-acceptance and identity. This approach aims to guide young readers to naturally understand and respect the uniqueness of each person while enjoying the fun of reading.

Many of your stories, like What is in the Park, are rooted in everyday moments and observations. How does your environment, particularly living in London, influence your storytelling and artistic choices?

London’s multicultural and rich artistic environment has greatly enriched my creative vision and inspired me to innovate in storytelling and character design. My illustration series What’s in the Park was born from daily walks in London’s parks. These parks are not only beautiful, but also places for social and cultural exchanges, allowing me to witness the harmonious coexistence of people from different backgrounds. This diversity deeply attracts me.

fIn particular, the scenes of musicians in the park and their animal audiences not only show the harmony between man and nature, but also greatly inspire my creativity. These observations become the source of inspiration for my creation, helping me to shape the story and convey deep educational meaning to the audience.

As someone who has received recognition from both Chinese and international institutions, how do you see your work bridging cultural perspectives in illustration and children’s literature?

As an artist recognized both nationally and internationally, I feel that I play a role in building cultural bridges in illustration and children’s literature. My work aims to attract children while promoting understanding and communication between readers from different cultural backgrounds.

However, this cross-cultural communication is not without challenges, and cultural elements must be handled accurately and sensitively to avoid misunderstandings or stereotypes. At the same time, I am aware that readers from different cultural backgrounds may have different understandings of the story, which requires me to take cultural differences into account when creating, ensuring that the story is both interesting and easy to understand. In the future, I need to continue to ensure that my work can continue to have a positive impact among different cultures around the world.