Raise Love by One Inch
Dates:
June 2 – June 8, 2023
Venue: The Crypt Gallery, London
Curator: Zhaoqi Yu
Participating Artist: Dengke Li, Elena Hoskyns-Abrahall, Jeanyoon Choi, Jessica Woo Jung Ghil, Wenyi Qian, Jiujian Zeng, Liangqia Huang, Ning Dong, Peng, Sen Kwok, Xiangdong Li, Xin Cao, Xiyue Mo, Ziteng Zhang (227)
Academic Support Partner: Underline Art Space
In the summer of 1967, a generation gathered in San Francisco to declare love—as protest, as philosophy, as a way of life. Known as The Summer of Love, this movement catalyzed an explosion of new art, music, and countercultural values, reshaping public discourse on romantic freedom, gender roles, and intimacy. It encouraged emotional honesty and radical vulnerability. Love became not merely a feeling, but a method of resistance and self-knowledge.
Decades later, love remains contested and complex. Social ideologies, cultural codes, religious beliefs, and economic pressures continue to shape how young people navigate affection, desire, and emotional connection. We are surrounded not by a lack of theory, but by its surplus. Paradoxically, the more we speak of love, the more elusive it becomes. Academic language often complicates rather than clarifies emotional truth. What if, instead of theorizing love into abstraction, we simply tried to raise it—even by an inch?
The title Raise Love by One Inch reworks the well-known political metaphor “Raise the gun by one inch”, shifting from confrontation to care. It asks: in moments when we feel cornered, can we still carve out space to let love speak? Can we reassert tenderness in places where we are taught to retreat into defense?
This exhibition poses these questions not as conclusions, but as open invitations. It brings together artists of diverse backgrounds to explore, resist, and reimagine love—its risks, its contradictions, its possibility—through sculpture, video, performance, and installation. By peeling back the layers of social expectation, the works here reclaim intimacy as something both personal and political. Raise Love by One Inch offers not answers, but gestures: toward softness, complexity, and the potential of love to move through constraint with grace.
展览把爱抬高一
时间2023年6月2日-2023年6月8日
地点伦敦The Crypt Gallery
策展人 于钊琦
参展艺术家 Dengke Li、Elena Hoskyns-Abrahall、Jeanyoon Choi、Jessica Woo Jung Ghil、Wenyi Oian、Jiujian Zeng、Liangqia Huang、Ning Dong、Peng、Sen Kwok、Xiangdong Li、Xin Cao、Xiyue Mo、Ziteng Zhang(227)
下划线的角色学术支持单位
The Summer of Love 是一场发生于1967年的社会运动。数十万人汇聚在美国旧金山宣扬爱与和平，并在此基础上创造属于那个时代的艺术、音乐以及流行文化。这场运动对自由恋爱、性别角色以及亲密关系等社会认知产生了积极的影响。它强调自我表达和个人主义，鼓励人们探索自己的感受和欲望，用开放和诚实的态度对待自己的情绪。由此，亲密情感的障碍被逐步打破，人们在人际关系中变得更加脆弱却真实。
随着时代的发展和变革，社会意识形态、文化规范、宗教信仰和经济地位都影响着青年群体对于爱的态度与信念。关于爱的讨论从未停⽌，这些讨论能否为现实生活提供更多积极的可能性？还是仅仅促使了⼀些学术理论上的概念设定被演绎？我们所⾯临的不仅是⼀个理论匮乏的状态，甚至是⼀种过剩的浪费，对于爱的解释和理论让情感表达变得更加复杂与克制。如果说“把枪口抬高一寸”是执行规则和唤醒善良之间的抉择，那么“把爱抬高一寸”即指向在面对被剥夺的生存空间时，我们是否还有选择给爱留下更多表达的出口。如此，不妨试试把爱抬⾼⼀⼨。
本次展览旨在提出有关人际关系和个人情感表达的问题。通过审视社会标准和既定规则，剥离通识的价值排序，我们希望鼓励人们更深入地理解爱的复杂性和多样性。展览将邀请不同身份背景的艺术家通过自身作品，通过多样化的作品形式进行对于爱的共同对话。借此鼓励大家以艺术为媒介在本次展览中分享个体经验和自由的表达。
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