Royal College of Art Student Exhibition / The Hidden Dimension
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Featuring Jingze, Jiahui Hou, Jiaxi Han, Naidi Jiang, Yifei Gong, Hao Yang, Ming Ying, Bo Wang, Ziang Wang, Chen Zhang, Lingrui Zhang and Sine Zheng. Curated by Yuejia Zhou.
Exhibition open 8am to 6.30pm, Monday - Friday 10am to 4pm, Saturday - Sunday
The Hidden Dimension
The “hidden dimension” refers not only to a physical space but also to the space that exists between our lived, conscious selves and our inner being. Since Freud’s discovery of the unconscious we have begun to understand that the world, of the conscious mind, is only a small part of the story. Indeed, following in the footsteps of psychoanalysis it has become commonplace across the arts and humanities to think of human beings as simultaneously existing on a number of psychological at plains — a multidimensional existence. We have come to the realisation that all human relationships are the results of a perpetual struggle between the conscious and unconscious realm in which they co-exist.
Following on from his seminal text, Silent Language, the anthropologist Edward T. Hall continued to explore the ways in which culture influences us in everything that we think and that we do. He began to examine what he calls the “hidden dimension”. Primarily concerned with the perception of space in different cultural contexts, and how one’s perceptions of space determines how we interact with the world, Hall argues that unconscious forces determine how we experience and negotiate the spaces around us.
Approaching the idea of “hidden dimensions” from a diverse range of perspectives including: phenomenology; post-structuralism and psychoanalysis, all of the artists included in The Hidden Dimension question the objectivity of the physical and social world. Each of the artworks presented in this exhibition move beyond conventional modes by which space is known and understood and suggest new ways of living spatially in the world. For the purpose of the show, the exhibition area of the Coningsby Gallery has been given over to twelve artists to examine how space speaks; the stories that it tells; and how we can respond to it.