Opening on January 16, 2026, Enchanted by Light unfolded as a week-long group exhibition curated by Chenyang Nie and presented as a signature curatorial project of Artistry Edge, bringing together artists working across fine art, design, sculpture, digital media, and experimental practices. Rather than positioning light as a singular visual subject, the exhibition approached it as a conceptual force—one capable of shaping perception, emotion, memory, and belief.
Installed as an immersive constellation of materials and atmospheres, the exhibition proposed light as both presence and absence: something that reveals while concealing, comforts while destabilizing. Throughout the gallery, light appeared not only in luminous surfaces or reflective forms, but also in subtle transitions—between transparency and opacity, material and immaterial, intimacy and monumentality.
This sensibility was immediately present in Soojung Park’s ink works on plexiglass, where etched lines hovered within translucent surfaces. Her process embraces uncertainty, allowing marks to emerge through response rather than control. The permanence of each incision—impossible to erase—transforms the surface into a quiet ethical space, echoing the way light itself leaves irreversible traces. As illumination passed through the plexiglass, her work became temporal, shifting with the viewer’s movement and forming a visual diary shaped by time and reflection.
A different material dialogue unfolded in Sammi C Wong’s newest ceramic sculptures, where light interacted with texture and shadow rather than pigment. Known for her fashion photography and analog film work, Wong’s transition into sculptural form expanded her signature sensitivity to color and atmosphere into physical space. The ceramic surfaces absorbed and refracted light unevenly, producing moments of softness and interruption that echoed her long-standing exploration of fragility, intimacy, and the emotional weight carried by illumination.
Light as an in-between state—neither fixed nor stable—also resonated strongly in Zengjie Chai’s abstract painting Aqua. Working through queer autotheory and autobiographical experience, Chai has long examined liminality as both identity and condition. His exploration of gradient transitions—where colors dissolve into one another without boundary—materialized the notion of existing between definitions. The blurred horizon within the work mirrored diasporic experience itself: a space where clarity gives way to fluidity, and light becomes an emotional register rather than a visual endpoint.
Photo Courtesy: Verso Studio
Narrative gentleness emerged in Weiyi Li’s illustrated series Reinald’s Daily Life, where soft digital hues depicted a solitary carpenter accompanied by star-shaped helpers. These small luminous figures transformed everyday labor into quiet enchantment. Through this intimate storytelling, light appeared not as spectacle, but as companionship—an internal warmth illuminating solitude, creativity, and the comfort found in imagined worlds.
The exhibition’s youngest participant, Dou Pu, brought a deeply intuitive and sensorial approach to light. Her paintings—Rippling Earth, Roots in Earth, Clouds Rising, and Dream of Light Hidden in Lily Cave—combined acrylic, natural materials, and spiritual symbolism. Drawing inspiration from nature, meditation, and embodied awareness, her work treated light as energy rather than image. Flowing pigments and organic textures suggested transformation, resilience, and cyclical rebirth, positioning light as something felt before it is seen.
A more mythological and philosophical perspective emerged through Zhongqing Jin’s Phantasm Series, including Mandrill Mirage and Glass Window with a Peeled Sticker. Working with digitally reconstructed imagery derived from satellite mapping and architectural logic, Jin blurred the boundaries between landscape, memory, and illusion. His fragmented color spectrums resembled folded light itself—at once cosmic and psychological. Through layered translucency and spectral transitions, his works questioned how reality is mediated in the digital age, proposing light as both distortion and truth. His practice bridged ancient mythology with contemporary visual technology, transforming light into a language of existential inquiry.
Photo Courtesy: Verso Studio
Sculptural design further expanded the exhibition’s material vocabulary through Shraddha Ghuge’s installation works. reDO, composed of used cardboard chairs paired with projection, explored sustainability, reuse, and the afterlife of materials. Light animated the surfaces, turning structural absence into presence. Her collaborative piece ExoCellar, fabricated from stainless steel and acrylic, extended this inquiry into architectural space. The work functioned as a prosthetic insertion—where reflective metal and transparency merged, allowing illumination to become structural rather than decorative.
Completing the spatial rhythm was Hannah Huntley’s sculptural work Mother Moon, where resin and acrylic formed a celestial body suspended between organic and artificial worlds. The sculpture captured lunar symbolism as both maternal and cosmic, allowing light to soften its surface and evoke cyclical time. Positioned within the exhibition’s broader narrative, Huntley’s work emphasized illumination as nurture—a guiding force that transcends darkness through repetition and return.
Together, these diverse practices formed a coherent constellation. Despite their varied media and cultural backgrounds, the artists shared an attentiveness to light as an experiential condition rather than an object. Whether through transparency, reflection, shadow, gradient, or narrative warmth, each contribution illuminated a distinct emotional register.
Curated by Chenyang Nie, Enchanted by Light demonstrated a curatorial language grounded in sensitivity rather than spectacle. By allowing works to converse quietly across space, the exhibition invited viewers into moments of pause and contemplation. Light did not dominate the gallery—it breathed within it.
As an Artistry Edge project, the exhibition affirmed the organization’s commitment to supporting emerging and cross-disciplinary voices through thoughtfully constructed platforms. More than a thematic showcase, Enchanted by Light became a meditation on how artists navigate uncertainty, transformation, and inner visibility in an increasingly complex world.
Long after the exhibition concluded, what lingered was not brightness alone, but resonance—the reminder that light is not only something we see, but something we carry.
