The Canoe Speaks: Jialin Yan in Conversation with Curators

For the exhibition Chimera in a Vat, Jialin Yan 严佳林 presented her latest cross-media installation, In Echo of Enigmatic Nights. Situated in an intimate room within the gallery space, the work explores a Tanka woman’s transformation into a canoe, evoking submerged histories of women. Combining fictional archives, sculpture, sound, text, and images, this spatial storytelling experience invites viewers to piece together a fragmented, felt transmission: from sea to land, from silence to speech.

In this one-hour conversation, curators Alex Xiaonan Guo and Serena Xinran Gao will speak with Jialin, beginning with her recent work and moving through her photography practice, while drawing connections to fictioning in art and curation, the curatorial methodology behind Project sitnaltA.