'South Gazing Mountain' was once the name Hakka villagers used for the mountain Nam Long Shan. In those days, the walled villages at the mountain's foot had not yet been swallowed by high-rises. Each morning, when villagers pushed open their doors, they saw the mountain lying to the south, with the sea glistening behind it. 'Gazing' is not a hurried glance; it is a way of being with something day after day. The mountain was a point of reference, a shelter, the beginning of a journey, and also a site of contemplation between death and rebirth.
The exhibition at Gaia Art Space takes 'South Gazing Mountain' as its title, inviting seven artists — Huang Dan @huang_dan_art , Huang Yuxing @huangyuxing_studio , Li Jin, Shen Liang, Wu Yijia @ikeeabug , Wu Yi , and Xu Hualing — to engage in a profound act of looking: toward the mountain, toward arrivals and departures, and toward the rhythms of everyday life. Rather than depicting the mountain directly, their works translate its spiritual qualities — permanence and fragility, outward gazing and inward reflection, purity and evanescence — into distinct visual propositions through their own artistic languages.