Group Exhibition Modern Art Museum, Shanghai
From November 10 to December 31, the Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai Dock Project presents the exhibition Mist-Shrouded Isles.
The exhibition centers on moving-image works by Han Qian, Li Jizhong, Yael Sloma, and Lebohang Kganye, taking "home" as its central conceptual framework. It brings together works that engage with family memory, migrant identity, and (post-)colonial history. Drawing upon distinct cultural backgrounds, perspectives, and artistic methodologies, the four artists reflect on the notion of home and its broader discursive implications. Through these diverse visual narratives, the exhibition invites audiences to initiate dialogue and action within a world defined by constant change, development, and mobility.
Recent scholarship on migration and border studies has increasingly challenged the concept of home, viewing it not as a stable symbol of nostalgia, origin, or cultural authenticity, but as an inherently unstable construct. From this perspective, home occupies a space that is neither entirely real nor imaginary, neither purely experiential nor wholly transcendental. Like a spectral presence, it hovers beyond the binaries of nature and culture, lingering at the margins of geography, race, history, and politics. It resembles an island adrift upon a sea shrouded in mist—its meanings continually shifting, its boundaries constantly drifting, its appearance forever changing. It seems within reach, yet remains unattainable. In this sense, it evokes the Welsh word Hiraeth: a longing for a home that cannot be returned to, may never have existed, and will never truly arrive.
Approaching this theme from markedly different perspectives, the participating artists extend it into diverse personal experiences.
Han Qian's recent video work Veronica persica (Arabian Speedwell) intertwines two journeys: that of her grandmother, who migrated to Qingshan, Wuhan, as part of China's industrial development and became one of the area's first-generation migrants, and that of the Arabian speedwell plant. Structured through a voice-over informed by the language of plant morphology, the work ultimately poses a profound question: How do a sense of belonging to one's homeland and the search for personal identity shape the course of an individual's life?
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