Personal Structures 2026

Liao Junwei – Personale Project

 

Personal Structures 2026

Palazzo Mora

Presented by European Cultural Centre

Venice, Italy

9 May – 22 November 2026

 

Within the framework of Personal Structures 2026, Liao Junwei presents a site-responsive solo project at Palazzo Mora, Venice. The exhibition unfolds as an inquiry into material temporality, transformation, and processual existence.

 

In Liao Junwei’s practice, material is not conceived as an object to be controlled but as a living condition with its own rhythm and agency. Her works do not illustrate external concepts; instead, through co-presence, juxtaposition, and duration, they allow processes to unfold autonomously. Art becomes a mode of inquiry into becoming rather than a vehicle of representation.

 

The ceramic works directly engage irreversible transformation. Under the intensity of fire, clay shifts from malleability to relative stability, acquiring structure through energy and time rather than compositional closure. Avoiding functionality and formal completeness, Liao’s wall-based pieces reveal cracks, density variations, embedded fragments, and residues. These are not metaphors of growth or decay but structural traces of internal tension—evidence of material negotiating its own limits.

 

In contrast, another body of work centers on sustained observation of natural objects, most notably the Mango series. Here, materials resist symbolic interpretation. The mango is neither metaphor nor cultural sign; it enters the work through volume, texture, weight, and mutability. Through repetition and waiting, subtle transformations become perceptible. Time operates internally, unfolding through duration rather than a singular visual instant.

 

The juxtaposition of ceramics and natural elements establishes a dual temporal structure. Ceramics temporarily arrest change through fire, isolating a phase of becoming; organic matter remains unfinished and can only be witnessed in flux. Together, they articulate a non-linear conception of time that oscillates between suspension and continuous flow.

 

Curated by Zhu Yaning, director of AAIE Center for Contemporary Art, the project situates these works as distinct temporal states within the historical architecture of Palazzo Mora. Engaging with contemporary debates on material agency and process-based ontology, Liao’s practice resists spectacle and immediate legibility. Transformation itself—rupture, maturation, decay—becomes the core operative system.

 

In a contemporary art context increasingly oriented toward acceleration and instant visibility, Liao Junwei’s project proposes a slower temporality of attention, positioning art as a practice of co-existing with material and with time.

 

 

Selected Works

 • 240627, 43 × 40 cm, Clay, Mixed Media, 2024 (Brown work)

 • 240625, 43 × 40 cm, Clay, Mixed Media, 2024 (White work)