LIU XIN Balance, 2025 Acrylic on canvas 70 x 50 cm (LX 26.02)
THE HARTZ PROJECT marks the opening of its new Hong Kong gallery space at M PLACE with Even Though I Forgot My Name, an inaugural group exhibition running from 18 July through 29 August 2026. Featuring seven Asian female artists—Yongqi Tang, Liu Xin, Xiangjie Rebecca Wu, Kyungmin Jean Lee, Alexis Jang, Ruxin, and Goyona Jung—
Operating at the boundary where social performance ends and authentic existence begins, shedding one's given name functions not as an erasure of personhood, but as an awakening to an essential, untamed truth.
Across distinct spiritual coordinates, the exhibition weaves a collective narrative field that traces the inner journey from memory to the unconscious.
The exhibition's exploration opens within the ether of memory, where artists transform transient emotional currents and nostalgic anchors into physical forms that connect past spaces with current experience.
In The Stage Builder, Yongqi Tang portrays herself operating a puppet show, using the miniature theater as a visual metaphor to deconstruct the performative nature of identity across public and private spheres.
Navigating her own lived experience between China and the United States, Tang uses puppetry to reflect the psychological tension of moving across contrasting cultural and ideological landscapes.
Suspended between alienation from her origins and displacement within her current surroundings, she exposes the fluidity of self-image and challenges rigid social classifications by acting simultaneously as the structural architect and the object being manipulated.
Moving deeper into the subconscious, the exhibition draws on dream topographies to dissolve logical boundaries and reveal raw psychological truths.
Liu Xin utilizes surrealist forms inspired by her private dreams, blending Freudian psychoanalysis and Greek mythology to dissect the complexities of human intimacy, isolation, and existence.
In her series of works, a contorted, thorn-covered cactus serves as a metaphor for the fragile tension of closeness—capturing the ongoing conflict between the pain of a shared embrace and the suffocation of solitude.
This fragile dynamic plays out on a symbolic seesaw that strips away romantic idealization to expose an underlying power struggle of compromises and deadlocks, ultimately leading to a desolate landscape where two numb figures remain bound together solely through psychological inertia.
Complementing this exploration of memory and the subconscious, Brooklyn-based artist Xiangjie Rebecca Wu brings a reflective approach to figurative painting, drawing on personal recollection and imagination to visualize lost time, selfhood, and the underlying anxiety of human insecurity.
XIANGJIE REBECCA WU The Remains of A Butterfly's Dream, 2025 Oil on Wood Panel 25 x 25 cm (XJRW 26.02)
Meanwhile, Xi'an-based artist Liu Xin grounds her practice in dream logic, using symbolic characters and spatial arrangements to map multidimensional perspectives on love and loneliness.
Together, the artists in Even Though I Forgot My Name construct a nuanced dialogue on the quiet, enduring essence of the self that remains after all external definitions are stripped away.
XIANGJIE REBECCA WU Broken Spoon, 2025 Oil on Wood Panel 13 x 18 cm (XJRW 26.03)
