Curated by Yi Ting Lee
Soryun Ahn, Ikuko Iwamoto, Eunjo Lee, Yuhe Luo, Duong Thuy Nguyen
21 March- 18 April 2026
Curatorial Statement:
“Had heaven intended This Culture of Ours should perish, those who died later would not have been able to participate in This Culture of Ours.”
– Analects by Confucius (c.551–c.479 BCE), as translated by Peter K. Bol
– Analects by Confucius (c.551–c.479 BCE), as translated by Peter K. Bol
The Analects was compiled in the two centuries following Confucius’s death and consolidated over the next five centuries. Today, it is widely seen as the foundational text of Sinosphere cultures. Indeed, heaven seems to have intended for “This Culture of Ours” to endure.
Who claims this culture, and how does it live on? According to Bol, by the Tang dynasty (618–907), “This Culture of Ours” came to stand for “textual traditions that originated in antiquity.” In other words, over a millennium later, this culture was claimed by a predominantly male sphere guarded by a literary elite, even though Confucius’s philosophy itself has seven hundred years of uncertainty in its textual history.
Along the way, those in the margins of history have served as silent guardians and transmitters of another facet of culture. This exhibition foregrounds unwritten stories, folklore and mythology as an alternative to an intellectual structure dominated by institutionalised knowledge and textual authority.
One can dismiss old wives’ tales, yet they are often told by mothers who pass down their wisdom in our early moments of reckoning with what it means to be who we are. Told in intimate quarters and domestic spaces, these stories transgress class, status and history. They become cornerstones of identity and underpin a cultural sensibility woven into language, cosmic understanding and perspective, shaping festivals, customs and measurements of time that become shared values without specific prescription.
The five artists in this exhibition share a reverence for narratives rooted in their local traditions and the experience of navigating life in London with sensibilities informed by tales from Asia. The artworks reveal how these stories survive and are synthesised with contemporary culture. In their telling and re-telling, they are distorted and adapted, but ultimately transmitted and sustained. Their malleability is their strength, and their lives are our lineage. These old wives’ tales tie us to this culture of ours.
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Soryun Ahn’s (b.1986, South Korea) paintings and drawings are grounded in inner fiction and fantasy. Her canvases are sites of mediation where her external environment and reality intersect with reimaginings of ancient narratives, folklore and mythology. Her works have a strong narrative strand and often feature ambiguous figures that hover between beings – human, animal and spirit. These recurring characters, stemming from her personal experiences and observations, seem to wander or exist aimlessly in their states of liminality, reflecting Soryun Ahn’s nuanced sense of identity and multi-dimensional cultural attachments. Soryun Ahn graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, 2024, with an MA in Painting. She also holds an MA in Painting from the Korea National University of Arts and a BA from Hongik University in Seoul. She has exhibited in Seoul and London, and had solo exhibitions in Seoul at Sahng-up Gallery (2023), where she completed a residency in 2021, and Hapjungjigu (2021). She was awarded an artist grant from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture in 2020.
Ikuko Iwamoto is a London-based Japanese artist whose primary medium is ceramics. Using porcelain and found material, she employs a slip-casting technique in combination with hand-sculpting attachments. Her mixed-media sculptures present intricate and fragile-looking structures and tactile surfaces modelled on organic forms. Informed by Shinto spirituality, her practice addresses human–nature entanglements and their manifestations in the materiality of everyday life. Ikuko began training as a ceramicist in Japan, under the tutelage of Asuka Tsuboi (1932–2022), and obtained a BA (Ceramics) from Camberwell College of Arts (2004) and MA (Ceramics and Glass) from the Royal College of Art (2006) in London. She has been awarded the QEST Andrew and Jane Winch Scholarship (2025), Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramic Prize (2019) and Ceramic Review Prize (2009), among others. She had solo exhibitions at Kainan Kouryu Centre (2023) and Sidcot Arts Centre, Somerset (2016), and showcased her work at various institutions including the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Manchester Art Gallery; Museum of the Home, London; and the Japanese embassy in the UK. Her work is in the collections of V&A, London; the Holburne Museum, Bath; Touchstone Rochdale; and Manchester Art Gallery.
Eunjo Lee (b. 1996, Seoul, South Korea) is a London-based artist and filmmaker whose work explores the interconnectedness of humans, nature, objects, and concepts. Drawing on ecological and relational frameworks, she employs mythological elements to reevaluate human ontological positioning, emphasising the role of digital art in depicting these relationships. Lee is represented by Niru Ratnam, London. She graduated from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2024 with an MFA, where she was awarded the Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize, having completed a BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London (2023). Recent solo presentations include a commission by Hervisions at Shoreditch Arts Club (2026); Focus, Frieze London (2025); Before the Shadow Taught the Sun at Goldsmiths CCA (2025); and When Forgiving the Sunlight at Niru Ratnam (2025). Her work has been screened at the Film-Architecture Forum, London (2025), Modern Art Oxford (2024), and the Seoul International NewMedia Festival (NeMaf; 2024). Selected works are held in the collections of the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts, the Palanga Collection, and Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
Yuhe Luo’s practice engages in a dialogue between traditional culture and contemporary material language. Working across textile processes, biomaterials, lampworked glass and metalwork, she investigates how materials can embody cultural memory and be reactivated within contemporary contexts. She explores the tensions between handcraft and technology, and tradition and modernity, while engaging themes of ecology, identity and heritage. Her work approaches art not only as material experimentation but also as a space for reflection and exchange. Luo graduated from the Royal College of Art with a degree in Textile Design. Her practice is shaped by her technical foundation and her nuanced understanding of material language developed through an interdisciplinary training.
Duong Thuy Nguyen (b.1991, Hanoi, Vietnam) is an artist working between Hanoi and London. Her interdisciplinary practice engages with memory, displacement and overlooked histories. Through experimental strategies, she reshapes knowledge production and fosters critical dialogue around colonial legacies, marginalisation, and industrialisation. Nguyen holds an MA in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins, where she was awarded the Maison/0 This Earth Award and the FRESH TAKE 2023 Prize. Her work is also held in the UAL Collection. Recent exhibitions and residency include: London's Museum of the Home as part of the Vietnamese Archives Artist Residency: Library of Ancestral Knowledge, Only Your Name (SLQS, London Gallery Weekend), New Art Exchange Open 24 (Nottingham), Enigma of Arrival (RCA, London), No Place Like Home (Museum of the Home, London) and The Space Between (TMLightning Gallery, London, 2023).