Alison Nguyen and Cathy Lu on view now at the Chengdu Biennale in "Symbiosis in Domain Shift 遷域共生” curated by Jay Xu.
Chengdu Biennale
Exhibition Period: 8 February - 23 August 2026
Venue: Chengdu Museum of Art
In "Symbiosis in Domain Shift", artists examine how histories, technologies, and migrations reconfigure the conditions of belonging. The exhibition foregrounds practices that dissolve boundaries of place and time, enabling coexistence between past and present, virtual and material, local and global. “Domain Shift” names the movement of forms, ideas, and people across contexts and invites an open artistic stance: to rethink human-world relations through flows, entanglements, and mutual transformation.
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Alison Nguyen's Prosthetic Memory assembles two interrelated installations that probe how media technologies mediate personal and collective histories. Through layered imagery and sensory augmentation, Nguyen treats memory as a portable, engineered extension of the body—one that can be transferred, edited, and recontextualized. The work asks viewers to consider how technological prostheses reshape identity, alter historical narratives, and produce new forms of communal remembrance.
Installation views from "Alison Nguyen: Prosthetic Memory" at gdm Taipei (2025).
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Cathy Lu's Nuwa’s Arms isolates the disembodied arms and hands of Nuwa—the mythic creator depicted with a serpent’s body and human head—and renders them as a hybrid of myth and local history. The sinuous limbs, glazed luminously, are inset with dried grape stems that form a miniature garden. This intimate tableau honors Chinese immigrants who cultivated Sonoma County’s vineyards in the 19th century and later faced racial exclusion, linking ancient creation myths to histories of migration, labor, and erasure.
