Event Recap
Nigtfall Division: A Group Exhibition on Discipline, Desire, and the Nocturnal Self
By: Chenqi Jiang, Jiaao Yin
Exhibition Poster designed by: Jocelin Cheng, Jase Cooper
Exhibition Dates: July 10 to July 17, 2025 Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 5:00 PM
Performance “Not for Sale”: Friday, July 11, 7:00 PM
Venue: 3 Wedmore Street, Archway, London N19 4RU
Curated by: Chenqi Jiang & Jiaao Yin
Assistant Curator: Jingyao Jia
Participating Artists: Annette Harvest, Caijing Kuang, Chenqi Jiang, Crude-Castin, Guo Cheng, Hui-Hsin Lu, Jingchen Han, Jingyao Jia, Lance Lin, Lingfei Shen, Louise Hapton, Mengzhu Li, Mingzhang Sun, Sebastian Alabaster, Weiyi Chen, Yulai Xu, Yuze Yuan, Yeer Zhang, Zhaoyang Chen, Ziyang Chen.
Performance: Not for Sale, Choreographer: Hui-Hsin Lu, Performers: Yueting Liu, Zhou Jie, Junxin Zhang, Ka Ki Christina Lai
Nightfall Division is a contemporary art exhibition that uses night as both metaphor and method—a shift in perception, a crack in the system. Inspired by BDSM culture and Liu Cixin’s “Dark Forest” theory, the show explores how shame, desire, and fear often hidden during the day and take shape in the dark. Through photography, installation, painting, video, and performance, the exhibition traces how systems of power influence our bodies, identities, and emotions. In a world that values “freedom,” the exhibition asks what freedom really means when internalized control becomes second nature.
Louise Hapton’s I don’t want to bring back Shame (2025)
At the heart of the exhibition is the question of discipline—how it is imposed upon the body and absorbed by the self. Situated in a functioning shibari studio in Archway, London, the exhibition site serves as more than a backdrop. The spatial conditions—raw, intimate, and laden with symbolic meaning—mirror the show’s core themes of power, submission, and emotional exposure. The exhibition opens with a symbolic tombstone carved with the words “RIP SHAME,” marking the beginning of a path through layered emotional landscapes. As visitors move through the space, they encounter works that do not offer resolution but rather inhabit a field of tension between repression and recognition.
Mingzhang Sun’s And Yet (2025) & A Moment I Heard (2023) ; Cheng Guo’s Piercing Light (2023)
Weiyi Chen’s You, Me, Us (2025); Ziyang Chen’s Cottaging ll (2025); Lance Lin’s Compressed Masculinity (2024)
The exhibition unfolds across three connected spaces, each approaching the theme from a different angle. In the Installation & Painting Gallery, the works explore how identity is shaped—and pushed against—through materials, symbols, and spatial tension.
Jingyao Jia’s China’s Occident, England’s Orient (2023-2025); Jingchen Han’s Yuzhang Academy (2024)
In the Photography Gallery and Video & Sound Room, the focus shifts to desire, performance, and the subconscious. Staged images, films, and sound blur the line between viewer and subject, memory and imagination. The works invite the audience to feel rather than interpret, stepping into a space of uncertainty and emotional intensity.
Zhaoyao Chen’s Mao Zedong Triptych (2024); Yulai Xu’s Fishtail(2025);
Mengzhu Li’s Seeing Higher on the Shoulders of Giants (2023); Chenqi Jiang’s Self-Portrait 1 & Self-Portrait 2 (2025)
Mengzhu Li’s Seeing Higher on the Shoulders of Giants (2023); Chenqi Jiang’s Self-Portrait 1 & Self-Portrait 2 (2025)
CRUDE-CASTIN’s BLACKSWAMP (2022); Yeer Zhang’s Feast (2024); Lingfei Shen’s Psyche (2023)
The opening night features a live performance titled “Not for Sale.” With minimal staging and physical gestures, the piece turns the venue into a space of bodily presence and shared tension. It echoes the exhibition’s focus on submission, resistance, and the politics of exposure.
Hui-Hsin Lu‘s Not for sale (2025)
Annette Harvest’s Party Next Door (2025) & If You Don’t Like it, I’ll Eat it (2025)
Annette Harvest’s Party Next Door (2025) & If You Don’t Like it, I’ll Eat it (2025)
BDSM here is used not as spectacle, but as a metaphor—for the ways society disciplines us, and how we internalize these disciplines. The show also draws on Liu Cixin’s “Dark Forest” theory, where silence is a survival tactic. This becomes a metaphor for modern life: hiding the truth to avoid rejection. In this framework, we are both hunter and the hunted—managing fear by disappearing.
Nightfall Division doesn’t try to offer answers. Instead, it opens questions—about control, identity, and the things we keep hidden. Set in a space far from the clean white walls of typical galleries, the exhibition embraces complexity and contradiction. The studio is not just a setting but a partner in shaping the experience. Together, space and artwork build a world where tension becomes a tool, and what’s usually unseen can finally be noticed—not as spectacle, but as possibility.
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