To mark Chris Zhongtian Yuan’s solo exhibition All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss at V.O Curations, the artist will be in conversation with artist and composer Joe Namy, as well as art historian and curator Xin Wang. Taking the exhibition as the starting point for discussion, they will explore the personal and historical narratives that form their practices, sonic connections to land and movement and role of fiction in the recording of history. The conversation will also focus on the artistic processes that involve close collaboration and exchange with other practitioners.

Developed during their four-month residency at V.O Curations, Chris Zhongtian Yuan’s first solo show in the UK will feature a new film, drawing, and a series of ceramic works. Through sung words, foregrounded ghosts, softness as empowerment, and imagined dialogues as corporeal connections, Yuan explores the tenderness and cruelty of migration, drawing from one’s relations to others, to faraway places, to past and future.

The film features footage shot on 16mm film camera, animation and archival materials. Structured as an intimate conversation between two individuals, it is divided into five chapters: Mother; A Love Story; The Tower; Unknown Land; Haunted Island. The dialogue between the two characters appears only on screen, as the film is led by a sonic narrative – a score composed for the work by British trumpeter Kevin G. Davy.

The artist extends the visual language used in the film through ceramic sculptures and large-scale drawing that are composed of the film’s script and elements of animation. All the works explore the correlation of identity and sound in the history of migrations, from both personal and historical perspectives.

All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss is co-commissioned by FLAMIN and V.O Curations; supported through FLAMIN Fellowship 2021-22 and V.O Curations Autumn 2021 Residency; additional production support from not/nowhere; supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.