What Holds, What Drifts.

Artist: Tingting Xiao, Shenlu Liu, Jiayi Yu

July 2025

Exhibition Introduction

In summer 2025, K:art Studio is honored to present What drifts What holds — an exhibition that reflects on the subtle tensions between binding and drifting, stitching and loosening, repairing and letting go. These seemingly contradictory gestures speak to the instability we encounter in our relationships, our memories, and our identities. They are not opposites, but forces that interweave and unfold together. The exhibition asks: as the structures of the world loosen around us, how do we hold ourselves together? Can we create connection even as things fall apart?

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Textile, as a medium, embodies this paradox. To stitch is to connect and to mend, yet it also carries the possibility of fraying and breaking. It offers stability while remaining in constant drift — a condition that mirrors the rhythm of our daily lives. Within this framework, three artists approach the theme in distinct but interrelated ways. Tingting Xiao’s The Shuttle: Sailing Threads reimagines an old weaving tool as if it were a child’s toy, moving between family memory and personal sensation, gently unraveling the meanings of handcraft while stitching new relationships into being. Shenlu Liu’s Organolux explores invisible connections through a light installation that responds to the presence of the body, evoking the sense that even without movement we are already bound to one another and to the world. Jiayi Yu works with glass, currency, and the touch of human hands to expose the unseen structures that tie us to social and economic systems. Her works suggest that stitching can become a means of survival, while letting go may be an act of fate, ultimately asking whether the very things we most desire might in fact be what hold us captive.

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Together, these practices suggest that our existence is never fixed but always in motion — bound and released, tethered and untethered, continually reshaped. what drifts what holds is not simply an exhibition about fabric and thread; it is a rehearsal for living, a space to reflect on what it means to remain present in the fragile balance of “here and now.”