Group Exhibition E.SCAPE, Shanghai, No.3, Lane 40 Wukang Road, Xuhui District
Artists: Hu Jie Ming, Hu Wei Yi
Curator: Rachel Wang
Artistic Director: Yuan Yuan Jin
Psychological academic support: Lyu Zhou Da
E.SCAPE is honored to announce the presentation of Finally, I Am Beyond That House, the second father-son duo exhibition by artists Hu Jieming and Hu Weiyi since their first collaboration in 2018. Curated by Rachel Wuang, the exhibition unfolds along the conceptual thread of the annual theme —— "[jiā]_家" conceived by Artistic Director Jin Yuanyuan.
As the curator, I am both a member of the family and the fortunate weaver of this exhibition's narrative. It is precisely from this intimate distance—close yet gradually approached—that I have come to see the two generations of artists charting their radically different paths back to "home."
Nestled on Wukang Road, this century-old villa has borne the traces of multiple generations since the last century, serving first as a family dwelling and now as an experimental art space where diverse cultures converge. Artist Hu Jieming resided here for one month, observing objects and time from the perspective of a guest: the mottled bricks, the shifting light through the lattice windows, the worn grooves of the staircase—those sealed memories of passing years, those silent things, the compressed time—all quietly revive, delicate and vivid, under his gaze. In his works,architectural contours are transformed into a genealogy of sound; the boundaries of objects become the boundaries of perception; materiality ceases to be a silent backdrop and emerges as a vocal "subject." Through photography, video, and installation, he bridges the century-old space with contemporary experience, articulating the position of individual existence within the flow of time.
Hu Weiyi's practice, in contrast, turns toward a spiritual dimension, aiming to transcend the material concept of "home." He incorporates his own family's everyday life into his narrative, telling the hidden stories of four generations—affection, death, new life, as well as the violence, solitude, and tenderness tucked in ordinary corners—and weaves them into a secret path toward self-reflection. With poetic calm, he observes his wife's daily life after childbirth; he reconstructs his grandfather's likeness through a medium's oral accounts and AI technology; and he develops the image of the absent relative using his own blood. In his imagery, his grandmother finally transforms into a dove and flies out of that dim room...
The two artists follow radically different creative trajectories: one takes materiality as his field, the other, spirituality as his path. "Home" is no longer a single physical address; it is the fold of time and memory—something that can be repaired, recalled, and reimagined. Amid the century-old house's longevity and the father-son duo's creative interplay of emergence and dissolution, as you step inside, this very moment becomes the instant you and we share together.
In this instant, origin and destination, presence and absence, history and the present, the material and the spiritual—all converge into this moment, and dissolve into one.
Curator Rachel Wang / Text
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