Soka Art is pleased to announce that the group exhibition "Paris, Texas" will open on April 29th, 2023, and will run until May 28th, 2023. The exhibition, curated by Ruoqi Wu, invites eight young artists who have experience studying or living abroad, including Ye Cheng, Wuchao Feng, Shuling Guo, Xinran Liu, Yue Sun, Jingqi Wang, Zixiang Wei, and Nai-jen Yang, to showcase their recent practices. Based on their artworks, the exhibition aims to connect their inner monologues about self, belonging, and personal identity. 

In the film "Paris, Texas" directed by Wim Wenders, the main character Travis searches for a place called Paris in the West Texas desert persistently and relentlessly. It is impossible to compare the glitzy art city of Paris to the desert of Texas, as they're distinctly different from each others. However, he keeps wandering on the highway, using the photo as a clue to find the point of origin in his memory. Through those years, time stops flowing as water freezes into ice. No one is on the road, leaving only a vast expanse of yellowish dust and sand. In a way, it may be a destination, a starting point; a personal memory, a feeling; an inner comfort, a reason to live; a distant longing, or an illusion of warmth from the past.

“Travis, what are you looking for?”

Maybe it's a shared question. Every one of us is trying to find an unreachable destination, a place where we can speak about our unbearable loneliness without fear of being rejected. Maybe it’s a metaphor for reality: the social distance between people in urban life is blocked by high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. In countries that are far away from home, we need to cross insurmountable ideological gaps in an attempt to get closer to the people around us. The bewilderment of losing direction makes it difficult to escape, but there is nowhere to hide. Starts from wandering and ends up drifting. This is the eternal reincarnation of our world.

Artists in the exhibition have a bicultural background and have frequently traveled and lived in different countries, building bridges between the origin and destination. However, at the same time, this transnational and inter-temporal living make their life challenging as an individual. Not only are there language barriers and cultural differences, but artists also need to face deeper spiritual and intellectual worries and confusion consistently.

As drifters search for a sense of cultural belonging, artists show their thoughts about emotion and personal identity through artworks. The relationship between cultural unblocking and cultural integration is like overlooking the shore. It is through their experiences that the middle ground, where cultures meet, can be explored. Like the main character Travis, they’re searching for a place that may or may not exist.