Exhibition Title: After Language
Dates:

June 29 – July 11, 2025

Venue:

Underline Art Space, London

Curator:

Sen Kwok

Participating Artist:

Anais Ost, Annabel Cator, Keiying Yip, Lanyun Huang, Xiaoren Fan, Yichun Huang, Ziyi Wang & Siyuan Shen

Organizer:

Underline Art Space

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

After Language is a curatorial inquiry into the nature of expression when language falters. In an age marked by communicative misfires, cultural dislocations, migration, the erosion of mother tongues, and fragmented speech across digital platforms, language ceases to function as a universal bridge. Instead, it becomes an obstacle. This exhibition turns toward nonverbal expression—image, rhythm, ritual, material, structure, body, and silence—as alternate forms of articulation that speak powerfully without relying on words.

This exhibition gathers artists who create beyond, against, or after language. Their practices resist the dominance of narrative clarity and instead embrace the ambiguous, affective, and open-ended qualities of nonverbal expression. Works included engage with the absence of language, the untranslatable, and the power of silence. Here, art is not only a mode of creation, but a reconsideration of what it means to be understood.

During the opening, Lanyun Huang presented her performance am,t ,s,me, embedding her body in the bathroom—a private yet hyper-structured space. Rather than mimicking bathroom objects, she becomes absorbed by their system, dissolving her subjectivity as language deteriorates into unconscious vocal fragments. In this silent collapse, language devolves into residue, and the artist, covered by utilitarian objects, becomes a ghostly echo of institutional control. In the aftermath of language, the body becomes the shadow of order, the trace of voice, the residue of structure.

Yichun Huang’s paintings approach the limits of linguistic structure through an intuitive, trance-like process. Avoiding predetermined composition, she constructs spatial fragments through layered geometry and vivid color, forming a visual system guided by subconscious flow. Her work enacts a form of ritual image-making that bypasses language, activating inner perceptual systems and proposing new links between self and world.

Xiaoren Fan’s sculptural practice offers a material narrative that transcends verbal articulation. Working with fire and earth as elemental codes, his installations generate sensory systems of transformation. Here, language is displaced by the density of material, tactile rhythm, and symbolic residue. In a posthuman framework, his works evolve as quasi-organic entities, breaking with anthropocentric modes of meaning. Viewers do not “read” the work—they receive it through resonance with matter.

In Anais Ost’s ensemble of installations, matter becomes both site and voice. Her sculptural language draws on geological time, erosion, and mirrored disfiguration. In these works, the pedestal is no longer support—it is sediment, memory, and affective container. Reflective surfaces don’t return identity but splinter it. Anais constructs a nonverbal grammar through texture, collapse, and reflection—a poetics of material tension and quiet resistance. In the absence of language, her works continue to speak, not through narrative, but through glimmer, trace, and weight.

Ziyi Wang & Siyuan Shen present a visual inquiry into the dialectics of material and data. Beginning with parametric design and 3D printing, and concluding in handwoven, dyed nylon structures, their work re-embeds digital aesthetics into tactile form. No longer mere tool, the digital becomes substance—felt, seen, and embodied. Their work inhabits the tension between virtual and real, order and contingency, standardization and individuation. In the retreat of language, expression migrates to the edge of structure, into the weave of surface, and the breath of form.

Keiying Yip’s practice poses a crucial question: when language fails, how does the sacred endure? By reimagining Buddhist iconography and sacred relics, Yip releases belief from linguistic codification and reactivates its vitality through material resonance. Her works do not narrate—they reveal. Through silence, transformation, and nonhuman presence, she opens an affective space where belief, identity, and being unfold in a nonverbal continuum.

Annabel Cator’s installation A torso , a thing , a flower. explores the mutual collapse of linguistic structure and bodily boundary. Rooted in queer ecology and biomaterial research, her practice locates the body within cycles of decay and regeneration, forming a post-linguistic ecology of becoming. By dissolving binaries and embracing the logic of matter in flux, she proposes a silent ethics of resistance—language is not rejected, but composted; not spoken, but grown.

Together, these artists present a world not after communication, but after language—where expression persists through surface, frequency, and fracture. They build a shared vocabulary of textures, gestures, and atmospheres. One does not “read” this exhibition. One feels it.

We Spoke in Silences, We Understood in Fragments.

语言之后After Language
策展人仰成 (Sen Kwok)
参展艺术家 Anais Ost、Annabel Cator、 Keiying Yip (叶纪瑩) 、Lanyun Huang (黄兰芸)、 Xiaoran Fan (范笑然) 、Yichun Huang (黄一纯)、Ziyi Wang & Siyuan Shen (王子懿&申思苑)
开幕2025/06/29 周六 16:30
展期 2025/06/29 – 07/11
开放时间周一至周六 11:00 – 18:00
地点Underline Art Space (英国伦敦)

____Underline Art Space下划线艺术空间荣幸宣布于2025年6月29日推出群展《After Language (语言之后)》。此次展览由Didots Art荣誉出品，由仰成担任策展人。呈现分别来自中国、英国、秘鲁、瑞典的7组艺术家的近期跨媒介创作。

“凡是不能说的，就必须保持沉默。” ——路德维希-维特根斯坦

当语言逐渐失效、误读频繁、交流边界变得模糊时，我们如何仍然“被理解”？在文化错位、迁徙现实、母语失落与社交平台碎片化表达的影响下，语言不再是普遍的桥梁，反而成了障碍。于是我们将目光转向非语言的艺术表达：图像、节奏、仪式、结构、材料、身体、沉默——那些“说了很多”却未必依赖言语的路径。

本次展览邀请那些用“语言之后”的方式进行创作的艺术家们：艺术家们挑战语言在叙述中所占的主导地位，拥抱非语言所拥有的模糊、情感性、开放性。本次展览尤其关注那些关于“语言缺席”、“无法翻译的经验”、“沉默的权力”等创作方式的艺术家的作品。艺术在此不仅是创作，更是一种对“何为理解”的重新提问。

在展览开幕式现场，艺术家Lanyun Huang带来了她的行为艺术作品《am,t,s,me》。她的身体在作品中不再是语言的载体，而是语言机制本身的见证物。这件作品的开始将艺术家的身体嵌入浴室——一个私密却高度结构化的空间。浴室的日常动作中隐藏着规训与顺从，制度在重复中内化于身体。艺术家在表演中不模仿浴室的物，而是成为其系统的一部分，让主体意志逐步消解，语言崩溃成身体裂缝中渗出的无意识。

在行为现场的后期，艺术家从浴室回到展厅的公共场域，语言从言说工具退化为声响残留，从语义逻辑退化为被动执行的身体痕迹。当艺术家被物品覆盖、情绪崩塌时，她成为了社会结构残留的一个回音：在语言之后，身体如何成为秩序的影子，发声的残响，结构的幽灵

在 Anais 的装置作品中，物质既是现场，也是声音。她的雕塑语言借鉴了地质年代、侵蚀和镜像变形。在这些作品中，基座不再是支撑物，而是沉淀物、记忆和情感容器。反光表面并没有回归身份，而是将其分裂。

Anais 通过质地、坍塌和反射构建了一种非语言的语法：一种物质张力和静静抵抗的诗学。在语言缺失的情况下，她的作品不是通过叙述，而是通过闪光、痕迹和重量继续说话。

艺术家Xiaoren Fan的实践则提供了一种超越言语系统的物质叙事路径。他通过火与土两种基础元素所构建的装置形式，模拟出一套非语言的感知结构与转化逻辑。展览中他的两件作品都在回应如何通过材料的编织生成一种超越文字的“知觉仪式”。

语言在此被置换为符号、光、物质密度与触觉节奏所构成的交流系统。在后人类语境中，他的雕塑实体如同拟生命体般持续生成与演化，打破了人类中心主义下的语义支配关系。观者不再是通过阅读来理解，而是在现场与材料共振中被动“接收”。

本次展览中，呈现了艺术家Yichun Huang的四件架上绘画作品。她的绘画实践体现了一种对语言结构的主动绕行与形式性语法的重构。她通过拒绝预设的构图逻辑，以潜意识的流动生成视觉秩序。

绚丽的色彩、互为穿插的几何图形在画面中构建出一个个断裂却连贯的空间切片。

其绘画实践接近一场图像的“仪式行为”：在非言语状态中激活内在感知系统，促成主体与世界的重新联结。这些作品既非叙述性，也非表达性，而是以图像方式探讨感知经验的边界。

艺术家Annabel Cator在《After Language》的策展语境中，其装置作品《A torso, a thing, a flower.》似乎提出了对语言结构与身体边界的共同瓦解。以酷儿生态学为理论支点，艺术家将“身体”置于衰败与再生的动态循环中，使其成为一处非语言性的生成场所——在其中，“我”的概念被解构，主客体的二元划分失效。

她以生物材料与装置构成出一种介于人类与非人类之间的物质性遗迹，让“语言之后”的表达转化为有机变异、结构沉积与物种纠缠的场域实践。这不仅是对语言能力的回避，更是一种后语言伦理的构建：以身体解构语言霸权，以腐败暗示再生，以沉默生成力量。

艺术家Ziyi Wang & Siyuan Shen的作品则探讨了“表达机制之外”的问题域。其作品以参数化建模与3D打印为起点，经由手工编织与染色的介入，构建出一种既来自数字逻辑又突破数字范式的物质性语言。在此，数字不再只是工具，而被转译为一种具有触感与语法的实体存在。

作品中的张力来自其跨越虚拟与现实、逻辑与偶然、自动化与手工之间的缝隙：它既体现出数据化结构的冷静秩序，也引入了物质性带来的不确定性与身体性。这种辩证的视觉文本提示我们：当语言退场，表达可能转移至材质的边缘、结构的张力与物性的分布之中。

而艺术家Keiying Yip 的作品在这个展览中则像是提出了另一个关键问题：当语言失效，神圣如何被感知与延续？她以对佛教符号与仪式遗物的再构，将信仰从语言叙事中解放出来，转向一种物质性、感官性与生命性的共振系统。

她的作品们不是在讲述，而是在“显现”——以沉默的方式召唤感知主体与非人生命之间的共感机制，提示我们信仰、身份与存在并非依附于语言，而是在非言语场域中持续生成与转化。

以上，本次展览汇集了那些超越语言、绕过语言、或对语言失语的艺术表达。七组跨文化背景的艺术家们共同呈现了这个非语言性的跨媒介艺术场域。艺术家们的视觉、材料、类语言的实验，构造了如此一个“语言之后”的世界——不靠文字，不靠陈述，而靠经验、感知与或似模糊的理解。

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