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策展项目 curatorial projects

Expected / Expecting
曾期待的/正期待的
Group exhibition
Small Gallery London
from 16 May 2026 to 23 May 2026

策展人 Curator: 毛依晴 Cecilia Mao, 宋佳骜 Jiaao Song, 张昭智 George Zhang

展览文本 Curatorial text

我们总对自身怀有期待，其随生命轨迹的延长而逐渐消散，又在不经意间重新生长着。“我们曾期待的”与“我们正期待的”跨越时间，持续着纠缠与共鸣——一个或可发生、却从未到来的幻象于其中被我们窥见。

“期待”并不会随现实的到来而终止其行动，它们于正进行的现实中藏匿，又在认知中洄游，搅动微波，影响着当下我们的一举一动。当“期待”携我们走进展览，展厅中的样貌或已被其预先绘制于脑海。“期待”一举，终指向一方。

我们于此向当代艺术的固有理解发出挑战——它们是否塑造了、限制了、甚至遮蔽了我们本应体验到的更多可能。同时我们叩问：我们为何总对尚未发生之事物充满期待？“期待”是否能够成为一把开启现实更多可能性的金钥匙？

Expect /ɛkˈspɛkt/
Etymons: Latin exspectāre.
“To look out for, await”“To think or believe something will happen”

We always carry a certain form of expectation toward ourselves, which gradually dissolves alongside the trajectories of life, yet continuously regenerates itself within the unconscious. “Expected” and “Expecting” together form a resonant duo, throughout time, like a version of the future that was meant to be realised, but has never come to pass.

In this sense, expectation becomes more than anticipation. It becomes a kind of illusion about our ability to understand reality. While entering the exhibition carrying “expectations,” what lies within has already been pre-constructed in a certain way. By reexamining “expectation” itself, we might recognise that expectation is never neutral but always directed.

Here, we attempt to question the familiar ways of encountering contemporary art, how it may shape, limit, or even obscure our expirence of it. At the same time, we ask why we are drawn to things that have not yet happened, and why the future often seems more capable than reality of carrying emotions that remain difficult to express.

https://www.smallgallerylondon.com/exhibitions

从声音出发 Sound as a Point of Departure

以聆听作为入口，展览试图打破由视觉主导的感知惯性，使观众对展览与艺术家的既有期待在听觉体验中被重塑。

与此同时，展览挑战语言文字在叙事与经验构建中的作用边界，在观看发生前，以声音开启更多对作品感知与理解的可能性。

The exhibition invites you to enter through listening first. To break down the conventional expectation of how we understand artworks — challenging the habitual forms of visual expectation, we attempt to allow sound and hearing to participate in the formation of your anticipation and perception.

At the same time, the exhibition explores the limitations of language in constructing embodied narrative experience, using auditory imagination to open new possibilities for interpretation and imagination beyond the ocular dominance.

艺术家 Participating Artists

Alexandra Beteeva，彭聪 Cong Peng，敖德东 Dedong Ao，Lael Reiss，李田奕 Tianyi Li，刘子曦 Zixi Liu，陈正豪 Sparro Chen