Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary
Siyan Camille Ji and Zengyi Zhao Duo Solo Exhibition
A dialogue between image and emotion, one that contemplates both time and landscape
Words by 雅昌发布
Responsible Editor/Yaojie Chen
A journey does not always begin with a map. At times, it emerges from silence, from a still image, or from a glimmer refracted across the surface of water. The two-person exhibition The Skeleton of Time takes precisely such a beginning—an inward passage guided by fragility, memory, and the sense of spatial dissolution. Bringing together recent photographic works by Ji Siyan and Zhao Zengyi, the exhibition stages a dialogue between image and emotion, one that contemplates both time and landscape.
The tension between surface and detail
The installation is restrained and deliberate. Aside from the exhibition title, no textual information appears on the white walls. Deprived of explanatory captions, viewers are left to immerse themselves in the works, each photograph becoming an anchor of perception. The expanses of unmarked wall do not feel vacant; rather, they generate a rhythm between the images, allowing the pacing of vision itself to become integral to the exhibition’s form.
Zhao Zengyi’s photographs probe the tension between surface and detail. In one work, tiny white particles scatter across a deep black ground, their scale indeterminate—at once cosmic dust, geological sediment, or a microscopic specimen. The image hovers between the familiar and the alien, functioning as a metaphor for ecological degradation and the logics of consumption. Meaning is not insisted upon; instead, Zhao’s measured visual vocabulary invites reflection on matter and temporality.
Another work presents the delicate structure of a fish bone, suspended with crystalline clarity against a black background. What is inherently fragile acquires, through the lens, a sculptural solidity and presence. At once remnant and construction, the bone oscillates between natural residue and metaphysical form. In Zhao’s rendering, such ecological fragments become objects of sustained regard, pointing to the intricate relations among nature, death, and order.
Composed from light and breath
In contrast, Ji Siyan’s photographs register as more distant, more diaphanous, as if composed from light and breath. Her images of the Salton Sea displace the site from geography into atmosphere. In one work, the pale expanse of water merges almost seamlessly with the sky, producing a scene of utter stillness—without foreground or direction—drawing viewers into a perception tinged with estrangement.
Another photograph captures the fractured glimmer drifting across the lake’s surface. Here, narration dissolves; only light and rhythm remain. Through subtle modulations of tone and cadence, Ji crafts an image that is poetic rather than descriptive, suggestive rather than declarative. Her photographs do not prescribe emotion but evoke synesthetic resonance. The lake becomes an immaterial vessel, holding flux, incompletion, and the projections of inward sensation.
Together, the two artists construct a complementary narrative around the Salton Sea—Zhao attending to residue, fragment, and texture; Ji tracing atmosphere, temporal flow, and perceptual state. This lake, born of ecological accident, appears in their work as both terrain and allegory, registering the traces of natural transformation while echoing the reverberations of individual experience.
The exhibition sets no explicit boundaries; the two bodies of work are interspersed, placed in resonance with one another. Sufficient intervals between images establish a cadence that unfolds through the viewer’s walking and pausing. The exhibition’s intensity lies not in scale or spectacle but in its sustained and quiet insistence. It does not seek to narrate a complete story, but rather to elicit a revolving state of emotion: gazing, estrangement, contemplation, clarity.
The strength of The Skeleton of Time is its restraint. Through a rigorous visual language and acute sensitivity, the exhibition advances a meditation on seeing, remembering, and temporality. It does not offer a single moment of shock, but instead leaves a lingering reverberation—an afterimage that continues to resound long after leaving the gallery.
About Artists
Siyan Camille Ji is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BFA in Photography from CalArts and an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Southern California.
Ji’s work questions poetically the boundaries of imagery and reality by engaging the materiality and dimensionality of photography. To embody the materiality of the immaterial, such as human emotions and memory, Ji adopts installation, collage, and modernist techniques—“expanded photography” effective in expressing the singular materiality of the paper medium. The dimensionality of Ji’s works concerns more than the spatial composition of the visual, but the geographical mapping of the temporal—the change in materiality and methodology is a response to the aesthetic and spiritual urge to map the “memoryscape”—a metaphoric landscape formed by intersecting and parallel planes of memory. As a sojourner, forager, and most importantly, a geographer of this memoryscape, Ji constantly invites us into a space of relations through which the artist navigates a shifting urban- natural world and through which the audience is asked to rethink and relive those many connections lost to the noise in our eyes.
Zengyi Zhao, born in 1999 in Jinan, China, graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and recently obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design. As an artist primarily working in photography and video, Zengyi critiques the Zhao Zengyi, born in 1999 in Jinan, China, graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and recently obtained his Master of Fine Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design. As an artist primarily working in photography and video, Zengyi critiques the syndrome and alienation brought about by capitalism and consumerism. Through his photography, Zengyi visualizes the connection between personal life and grand narratives, addressing how modernity and spectacle manifest and influence various socio-cultural phenomena.