Artist: Jenny
Curator: Zhang Yining
Exhibition: Nov 21 — Dec 4, 2025
Venue: PHOTISM Complex, Chengdu

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Around 6 p.m., the light at PHOTISM begins to fade.
The space warms up slowly, like someone taking a quiet breath after holding it too long.

Jenny sits beside her images.
In person, she feels softer, blurrier than her work—
almost like a dream that hasn’t fully woken up.

She tells me, almost apologetically:

“I don’t really like being called an artist.”

But her images answer for her—
those trembling lights, hazy silhouettes, and colors caught between consciousness and sleep.
They whisper a truth she never says out loud:

She’s already making art.
Just very quietly.

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01 She’s not “creating.” She’s simply leaving traces of her life.

By day, Jenny works in the internet industry—
a fast, sharp world built on logic, clarity, KPIs, and constant pressure.

Her image-making is the opposite of that:
no deadlines, no precision, no clear answers.
Just a slow leak of emotion.

She says:
“It’s not my job. It’s where I put my feelings.”

During Beijing’s lockdown, she bought a camera just to kill time.
She couldn’t go outside.
So she photographed whatever was around—herself, a corner of light, blurry objects.

There was no plan.
No ambition.
Just breath.

And somehow, without meaning to,
a beginning appeared.

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02 The world has no clear edges. Her images don’t either.

Jenny’s images carry a kind of fog.

Foregrounds blur.
Colors flip.
Slow shutters pull the light into soft distortions.

She shrugs when I ask her about “methods”:

“I intentionally avoid learning too much theory.”

She doesn’t trust frameworks.
She trusts instinct.

Her images feel like the moment when a thought rises to the surface but decides not to say anything after all.
Like waking up in the middle of the night and trying to remember what you were dreaming.

She says:

“The world isn’t black or white.
There’s a lot of grey.
I want people to stay in that grey for a bit.”

Standing in front of her work, you can feel your heartbeat slow down—
as if the light is gently pulling you inward.

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03 Opening day: she looked like a bride who’s quietly zoning out at her own wedding

She sent friends exhibition invites.
At least five of them asked if she was getting married.

And honestly, the opening did feel like a wedding—
people arriving, greeting, hugging, drinking, smiling,
a kind of soft chaos.

But the most “wedding-like” moment happened afterward.

When everyone left, she walked past the projection in the back room.
It was just her and the images glowing in the dark.

She stopped.

“That was the first time I felt like I was with them.”

Not as their creator—
but as someone sharing the same air.

She said she felt strangely calm.
Calm in a way that would’ve scared her if she’d been at work.

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04 Three cities, three lives — she moved like weather

Changsha was warm and bold.
Beijing was sharp, dry, full of seasons and sunlight.
Chengdu is soft, familiar, but still somehow foreign.

She never needed to justify moving.
She simply said:

“Changing cities is like jumping from one well into another.”

The real well is your inner rhythm.
No matter where she lived, she kept the same rituals:
shooting, cooking, thinking, drifting.

The place changed,
but the self stayed steady.

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05 She acts casual, but her seriousness is like a whisper with a blade inside

Her exhibition looks effortless.
But every detail is intentional.

A mis-angled light created a soft “moon” on the wall.
She kept it.

Prints meant to hang flat ended up gently drooping.
She kept that, too.

She’s chilled on the outside, precise on the inside.

“I treat the process lightly, but the presentation seriously.”

That duality defines her:
soft edges, sharp attention.

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06 The future? As light as air

She has zero hunger for the “art world.”

No career plan.
No monetization strategy.

When I ask if she’ll keep photographing, she laughs:

“I probably will.
But maybe I won’t.”

It sounds casual,
but you can feel she already knows the answer.

Image-making is her way of meeting the world—
gently, privately, without explanation.

It’s a small, honest ritual.

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07 Introducing herself was harder than making the work

At the end of the interview, she faced the camera again.
Her shoulders stiffened instantly.

After a long pause, she finally said:

“Hi, I’m Jenny. I’m an image-maker.”

No labels.
No identity armor.
Nothing forced.

Just a person standing in a pool of soft, blurry light—
a line that has finally learned how to bend.

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Epilogue

Jenny’s images don’t try to convince you of anything.
They don’t pose, don’t demand, don’t lecture.

They simply exist—
like emotions leaking into the air,
like the outline of a dream slowly settling,
like a quiet moment suddenly remembered.

Just as her exhibition title says:

“Let a stiff line move freely through time.”

She is that line.
And she’s still moving,
quiet but unmistakably alive.

By Backwall
Afternoon of Nov 24, 2025
Chengdu · Yulin West Road

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1. An Afternoon Where Time Slowed Down

Chengdu winters can be lazy to the point you forget it’s winter at all.

That afternoon on Yulin West Road, the sunlight was soft like a thin veil—
falling on the wall, on the wooden table, and on the quiet space between us.
Coffee drifted in from the street, kids were laughing somewhere outside,
and the whole moment felt like a painting slightly washed-out by light.

Zhu Xin sat by the window, backlit, her outline glowing warm gold.
Her quietness had the kind of softness that makes the whole room slow down.

We didn’t plan the conversation.
It just grew naturally, the way light grows longer across a table.

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2. “After my dad passed away, I finally learned how to see color.”

Her story started with a sentence spoken very softly:

“My dad passed away in 2018.”

No drama in her voice.
Just the steady weight of something that will never fully fade.
Like the dark underpainting of a large canvas.

Back in college, most of her work was black, gray, deep blue—
the cloudy London sky, crowded Tube rides, cold river water—
all sinking quietly into her palette.

But after her father’s death, something flipped.

“It was like I went back to being a kid.
Suddenly everything looked bright again.
So my paintings turned super colorful.”

The colors weren’t “happy.”
They were new skin growing after a wound—
tender, painful, and real.

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3. Four Years in London: She Didn’t Just Learn Art—She Learned How to Endure

Zhu says her time at the University of the Arts London shaped her deeply.

No grades.
No “right” or “wrong.”
No one telling you what to use or how to paint.

Just one question:
Why are you making this? And how far can you take it?

“They weren’t trying to shape us into a type of artist.
They were teaching us how to keep going—
how not to get tired of the world or of ourselves.”

Her classmates painted on metal sheets, built installations from trash,
made sculptures out of anything they could get their hands on.

She tried everything too.
But eventually, she went back to canvas.

“It felt like speaking my native language,” she said.

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4. Two Years in Shenzhen: A Bit of Drifting, a Bit of Luck, and a Lot of Growing Up

After graduation, she didn’t return to Chengdu immediately.
She moved to Shenzhen.

There, she met a mentor—
an older artist everyone calls “Old Cai,”
who gave young artists free studios,
carried them to Hong Kong for shows,
paid out of pocket, never asking for anything back.

“He was a real blessing.
But the city was fast. Too fast.”

Responsibilities at home, grief that never fully settled,
and the rapid rhythm of Shenzhen eventually overwhelmed her.
She often felt breathless at night.

Those two years were meaningful, she said.
But they were also temporary—
like she had always known she wouldn’t stay.

So she came back to Chengdu,
back to somewhere her heart could land.

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5. Coming Back to Yulin: Returning to a Street, and Also to Herself

Now she lives in the same neighborhood she grew up in.

The alley hasn’t changed.
The old convenience store is still there.
Only her father is missing.

She repainted the house in bright colors—
yellows, greens, blues, warm pinks—
like giving her memories a new skin.

“Sometimes I turn a corner,
and suddenly think of him again,”
she said with a small smile.
A smile with a shimmer of tears behind it.

The sunlight on her profile in that moment
felt like a painting being gently lifted by the wind—
soft colors, quiet stories.

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6. She’s Trying to Step Out of “Loss,” But Not by Running Away — By Letting Go

Recently she started painting nature—
mountains, trails, the feeling of wind passing by your ears.

She wants to move beyond the sadness.

“I’m trying to switch themes.
But halfway through, I stop.
It doesn’t flow like it used to.”

That’s what healing sounds like.
Not sudden.
Not certain.
Just a slow, real movement forward.

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7. Her Place in the Chengdu Art Scene:A Quiet, Independent Figure Standing Firm in Her Own Corner

Zhu speaks gently, but she’s sharp and honest.

She says she can often see a teacher’s shadow
in many young artists’ works.

But she herself refuses to look too much,
refuses to imitate, refuses to blend in too easily.

“I’m afraid of becoming like someone else.
And I’m afraid of people saying I look like someone else.”

It’s stubbornness, yes.
But it’s also clarity.

She wants to protect the way she sees the world—
that innocent, childlike clarity she’s carried since long before London.

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8. At 30, She Lives Like a Plant: Soft, Resilient, and Growing in Her Own Direction

Zhu Xin is 30 now.

She carries her own 120cm canvases up six flights of stairs.
She cooks for herself.
She goes to the gym.
She can eat hotpot alone, watch movies alone—
she even did a gastroscopy alone.

She isn’t lonely.
She’s full.

She doesn’t like self-promotion and hates rejection,
but once her portfolio is ready,
she sends it bravely to mentors she respects.

She’s learning to grow up, but not to harden.
She’s growing the way plants do—
toward the light, but quietly healing in the dark.

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9. She Wants to Hold a Real Solo Show in Chengdu

When she mentioned this, her eyes lit up:

“I want to do a full solo exhibition here.
All original-size works.
No reduced prints.
A real, complete show.”

She said it softly,
but she meant every word.

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10. As the Afternoon Light Faded, Her Story Felt Like It Was Just Beginning

When the air started to cool, she stood up and said:

“This was a good chat.
When you get over your cold, let’s grab a drink sometime.
We’ll probably talk even better.”

The sunlight slid down her shoulder,
warm and gentle.

In that moment, her whole presence felt like a soft brushstroke—
steady, healing, unfinished in the best way.

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Why Write About Zhu Xin?

Because she’s honest.

Because her colors come from real stories,
her silence comes from real pain,
and her softness comes from real strength.

She isn’t trying to shock the world.
She’s simply laying the weight of life on canvas,
letting it spread, settle,
and then gently folding it back up.

A lot of artists chase the light.
She’s chasing a way of seeing.

And that, I think,
is worth recording.