She Looked BackPurist Gallery30/07/2025-03/08/2025https://artdaily.com/news/184468/The-Politics-of-Intimacy--A-Subtle-Reclamation-of-Female-Identity
Exhibition‘s Poster
LONDON.- The exhibition "She Looked Back" explores how personalized intimate experiences can serve as powerful social critique. The show avoids sweeping affirmations, instead focusing on a succession of precisely created micro-gestures: delicate threads conveying light, letters that must be touched to be read, faces that turn away from the camera, and household situations filled with anxiety. Together, these works challenge the notion of "female identity" as a fixed label, portraying it as a dynamic process that is constantly changed and negotiated within the worlds of home, labor, and the state of being seen. In this case, intimacy is used as a critical tool; soft materials and quiet tones are not an escape, but rather a way for experiencing the weight of structural pressures up close.
Exhibition On-Site Photo
Yuna Yudan Ding's series of four paintings serves as the exhibition's most candid and raw personal archive, tracing a complete arc of self-awakening. The journey begins with Child, which the artist describes as "an enlightenment of imagination and consciousness," a time when she began to distinguish between what she desired and what she hated, shaping her initial personality through exploration. This is followed by Girlhood, where the process of socialization begins; she "started to develop a sense of gender," and "the concept of femininity was superimposed upon me." Upon becoming a Wife, the consciousness of resistance becomes clear and active. Facing the "unreasonable parts" of the relationship, she explicitly states, "I began to try to resist," marking a progression from passive acceptance and internal struggle to an active, resilient construction of the self.
Exhibition On-Site Photo
Finally, in the role of a Mom, the internal conflict peaks as she confronts the profound challenge of "how to maintain and even develop self-awareness and a sense of fulfillment of self-value" after her physical self is occupied by family trivialities.
Lecture Dialogue On-Site Photo