My acquaintance with Hongbin Zhou and Yuming Mi began in New York. It was an unplanned encounter, crossing time and geography, yet gradually drawing closer due to a shared sensitivity. Our collaboration did not start from an exhibition, but was brewed from continuous dialogue and writing.
As early as the end of 2018—before the Hidden Utopia exhibition in Xiamen in early 2020—we began planning a book. This book will finally be published this summer by China Photography Publishing House, titled Hidden Utopia: Contemporary Women's Photography. It is a spiritual site co-created by women artists and a curator. Starting from our own experiences, we attempt to break the suppressed narrative structures in traditional photographic history, and reflect on ways of seeing, mechanisms of production, and the significance of photography in contemporary society.
The book selects representative works from multiple female artists in the contemporary photography field with independent thinking, acute perception, and broad vision, supplemented by in-depth dialogues among the three of us. We take “dialogue” as a methodology, integrating multiple dimensions of art history, feminism, and life philosophy. In it, we do not avoid confusion or conceal uncertainty, but instead regard them as an entry point for understanding art and reality. It is not a theoretical summary, but a reflection of real experience, and a practical response to the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi’s saying: “The usefulness of the useless is the greatest use.”
Continuing this thread of dialogue, we will launch a new exhibition on June 28, 2025 — The Vanished and the Yet to Come. This exhibition continues our sustained attention and reflection on “women” and “photography,” while also responding to an increasingly uncertain era: AI accelerating content generation, universities cutting humanities, emotions mediated by technology, philosophical thinking becoming increasingly marginalized... Amid all this, we believe more firmly that the most precious part of an artwork is always the flow of authentic perception and emotion.
In the new works of both artists, one can feel an echo from the essence of life — a gaze upon “disappearance,” an inquiry into “farewell,” and a sensitivity to time that is ungraspable yet unavoidable. They use photography — the art form most defined by “temporality” — to ask: In a world of information explosion and virtual spectacle, how do we identify genuine emotion and spiritual anchorage? How do we face death, rupture, and the forever-absent “future”?
Their lenses point toward the most easily overlooked minutiae of life: melting ice underwater, still life, a corner of a room... These images whisper quietly, yet layer by layer they permeate with a calm philosophical contemplation and gentle critique.
This exhibition is neither a conclusive summary nor a complete system. It is more like a letter, a meditation, a glimmer of light. In this rapidly spinning world, it reminds us to slow down, to pause, to confront what has quietly vanished, and to welcome those not yet formed but inevitably coming changes.
May this exhibition open a crack for every viewer, where you might hear the truest voice within yourself.
—Xie Xiaojuan
May 2025, New York
