Perhaps we have all had such an experience: when gazing at ourselves in the mirror, a sense of strangeness rise up, as if another "self" is looking back from it. Those ineffable identity struggles and tangled memories of the past within us resurface in the gaze that fixes on our own reflection, mediated by the mirror’s reflection. These subtle yet tangible pangs of discomfort are the starting point of this exhibition. Twenty-eight photographs and a set of moving images together construct a dreamlike, surreal space that exists between mirror images and reality.
The exhibition opens with a series of photographic works infused with halos. Some were shot in France’s Brocéliande Forest—a site of great significance in the legends of King Arthur, while others were taken near the artist’s home. The halos in these images seem to create a "negative space" within the flat plane of the photographs. At the same time, images related to the waxing and waning of the moon, the illusory and real nature of mirror reflections, and the possession of the soul all attempt to point to the "shadow space" that adheres to the photographs. This "shadow" corresponds to a concept in Jungian psychoanalysis: what we once regarded as negative, dark, and contrary to our "persona" is also a wellspring of creativity and vitality.
Moving into the second section, the intent of the works becomes more prominent. In pieces such as Scars and Dreams, Another Ruin, and A Cut is a Prelude to Repair, the artist combines paper-cutting, scratching, mirror reflections, and flowing water with self-portraits, using these elements to metaphorize the struggles of identity formation and the possibility of reconstruction amid fragility. These self-portraits transcend the realm of mere self-documentation; they become the mirrors that reflect the visible and invisible aspects of trauma, as well as its concealment and revelation. In a nearly phenomenological approach, the artist transforms the act of creation itself into a ritual of self-interpretation. This is not a mere description of wounds, but an "operation": using the photographic grammar to dissect the structural existence of trauma and attempting to build a bridge of meaning at the site of fragmentation. Together, these works form a "dialectic of negation": only by confronting what is broken can truth be reached; only by acknowledging ruins can reconstruction take on spiritual significance.
At the end of the exhibition, Double Witness (2020)—twenty video letters created during Mengyu’s residency in Paris—takes center stage. With an almost mediumistic obsession, the artist retraced the final steps that writer Miaojin Qiu took in Paris before her suicide. Through the precise alignment of geography and time, they transformed their own body and life experiences into a medium, becoming a "contemporary mirror image" of Qiu Miaojin in terms of age, ethnicity, emotion, and gender identity. During this sustained practice, the artist’s reality gradually intertwined with the heartbreak, betrayal, and passion depicted in Qiu’s novels, ultimately blurring the boundaries between existence and creation, self and other. By leveraging the dislocation of time and space, the work connects the obscured history of the queer community, serving as a profound tribute and invocation of "queer hauntology."
As a first-generation Chinese-Australian queer artist, Mengyu’s works are rooted in intersecting cultural contexts and identity struggles. Through these pieces, they transform cultural dislocation, gender transgression, and emotional trauma into a poetic language of resistance, while continuously striving to delineate an inner world—one that is in constant flux, struggle, and rebirth—between mirror images, specters, and ruins.
● Text｜Li Zijian