Oil on found wood, wood, printed fabric
Wall outside the Monk’s House 2023
Ceramic
Soap case 2023
Soap, ceramic
The Space between Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare 2023
Paper,audio
The Space between Us
Showcased in Goldsmiths Graduate Diploma
Open studio group exhibition ‘The Space of Memory:
A Dialogue Between Past and Present’
Exhibition Poster Designed by Cecily Lasnet and Freesia Tianyue Pi
Press Release
The Space of Memory
A Dialogue Between Past and Present
14th December - 15th December 2023 open 5 - 7pm Thursday -Friday
"Nostalgic retrospection is not only a personal condition, but also a symptom of our times, a kind of epidemic that seems to have intensified with modernity." Nostalgia transforms history into private and collective myths, and through nostalgia and narrative, time becomes a space that can be travelled through again. "
—Svetlana Boym
'The Space of Memory: A Dialogue Between Past and Present' aims to explore the intricate and complex perceptual relationship between the nostalgic retrospection and collective spatial experiences of the artists in this exhibition. The artists weave memories into an collective space for sharing personal nostalgia and emotions. In this space, the audience is invited to travel with the artists to the past or present, private or public, reality or dream.
The exhibition presents the work of five students from the Graduate Diploma in Art – Cecily Lasnet, Freesia Tianyue Pi, Ella Deregowska, Leena AI-Nasser, and Xin Huang. It showcases a diverse range of expressive forms, including painting, sculpture, installation, using the archival, audio-visual, and textual.
The combination of these different mediums is not only a display of the artists' individual emotions but also a collective dialogue that transcends the the boundaries of time and space.
Besides conveying a review of the past, this exhibition reflects on the future and creates a world that is both familiar and unfamiliar through the visual language and other sensations. The space encourages the audience to interact, engage and reflect on personal memories and experiences. Here, memory is no longer a single linear narrative, but becomes a space to be touched, felt and experienced.
Curator Pengyi Li
Bibliography Boym, Svetlana. “Nostalgia and Its Discontents.” The Hedgehog Review 9.2 (2007): 7-18. Google Scholar. Web. 12 December 2023.
Freesia Tianyue Pi - The Space between Us
Freesia's works are characterised by a transformative process of image making, in which she combines a variety of media including painting, ceramics and textiles. Inspired by her visits to Monk's House and Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, where the Bloomsbury Group lived, she skilfully recombines the memories associated with these spaces. Her work encapsulates the sensory experiences gained from these places and transposes them into a narrative space.