“The Garden of Perfect Brightness” solo exhibition at The Atkinson is a poetic exploration of the relationship between nature, culture, and power in the digital age. Through a series of paintings and sculptures, viewers are invited to contemplate the rise and fall of civilisations in the age of globalisation. Complex interplays of destruction and renewal, natural and artificial, and the duality of the “in-between” Chinese Diaspora identity, are all brought to light in the backdrop of geopolitical and historical events, in our rapidly changing world where history is written by victors. The show is constructed around the concept of a Chinese garden with sculptures created from Financial Times newspapers which draw inspiration from traditional Chinese ‘scholar’s rocks’ or ‘spirit stones’. Embodying microcosms of landscapes they are meditative focal points between nature and civilisation, the sculptures reflect on a world formed by datascapes shaped by the light speed movements of capita...