Alice Jiang: Stories of Knowing and Unknowing: 15 March - 20 April, 2025

BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

 
In Situ transforms a domestic space into a site of intimate inquiry, where art and environment converge in a dialogue about identity, perception, and interconnectedness. In Situ series—rooted in the legacy of site-specificity—challenges traditional exhibition models by situating contemporary artistic practices within intimate, lived spaces. In this setting, Jiang’s works engage with both the architecture and history of the lived space, extending the series’ foundational question: how does space shape meaning, and how do we define our place within it?

Alice Jiang’s work begins with an attempt to navigate difference. As an artist shaped by multiple cultural and educational contexts, she initially sought to define herself through contrast—by marking the ways she was distinct from her surroundings. I am 16 hours away from home, Asian, on a student visa. But over time, she recognized the limits of this perspective. The differences are important, but I sensed there are connections beyond such differences. This shift in focus—from separation to interconnectedness—became central to her practice.

Presented as a series of speculative fictions, Jiang’s works question the rigid definitions of personhood, knowledge, and humanity. She asks: What does it mean to be a person? Is it the ability to feel sadness and to laugh? To be aware of the passing of time? To inhabit a human-shaped body? Her work resists singular definitions, instead proposing that identity, like all living systems, is in a state of continuous transformation. Jiang interrogates the structures that define humanity—scientific classifications, anatomical charts, political systems—while simultaneously dissolving their authority.

Set within the intimate space of an apartment, Jiang’s works take on a relational quality, shifting as they are experienced in proximity to daily life. The apartment, with its layers of memory and personal history, mirrors Jiang’s inquiry into the fluid nature of identity. The works themselves remain open-ended—“I want the works to have a changeable and constantly evolving definition of being a person, even after they’re finished and shown,” she states. In this way, In Situ becomes both a conceptual and physical space for transformation, where art is not static, but unfolding—an ongoing negotiation between self, environment, and the structures that seek to define them.

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Alice Ningci Jiang (b.2003, Beijing, China) is currently studying at New York University, pursuing a BFA in Studio Art. To complement and nourish her studies in studio art, particularly painting, she has also completed a minor in philosophy at New York University. Jiang’s works have been exhibited in group shows around New York City, including the curatorial collective Loft 121, 80WSE, and gallery spaces within New York University. Jiang’s selected group exhibitions iinclude “I Go To Seek A Great Perhaps,” Make Room Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 2024 “Timeless Playground”, Common Gallery, Barney Building, New York, NY, 2023 “Dimly at First”, Loft 121, New York, NY, 2023 “Transversal: Where We Come From and Where We Are Going”, 2023, and 80WSE, New York, NY, 2023. Jiang lives and works in New York, NY.