BURNT

Images of fire surround us. Fire is what ignites, what transforms, what cooks, what enlightens and warms. It also burns and barrens, making space for loss and violence as much as for anew. Ambivalent within the scope of human perspectives, fire embodies both life and destruction.

What happens after something burns?

The exhibition BURNT explores fire in its potential for destruction and renewal. We imagine that what is left after flames are extinguished has a different chemistry on the space matter, a different smell, a change in views, and the potential for a different kind of growth.

Around us, we observe many cultural workers, friends, navigating sickness, fatigue, and precarity shaped by personal limits as well as systemic pressures. Communities exhaust, and solidarious ties get burned as well. Fire speaks to this reality: it can consume, but it can also spark collective warmth, urgency, and renewal. The theme resonates with the lunar year of the Fire Horse, displayed on the fabric illustrated by Tasneem Hozaien, whose energy we read as fierce, intuitive, and life-affirming, reminding us that what fuels us (our practices, our communities, our relationships) needs sustained care and concrete structures.

As part of the exhibition, Ni Daodao 倪島島 and FU CONG LE 付丛乐 present their poetic approach to body and personal trauma. In their work Before Burnout, they ask: Can a shell burned in fire through the night return to what it was before? / Can a fractured body ever be restored to what it once was? Their work draws attention to sound, scent, and taste as ways of slowing down and returning to the body. Through a sensory-led performance and its materialized relics on the window display of Les Complices*, CONG LE and Daodao unsettle the linear movement from burnout toward recovery.