Within Apertures
Mia Zheng

The culmination of Mia Zheng’s residency (China, lives in Hawaii, USA) was a multiple installation that the artist displayed in the Dialogue Space and in the Central Hall of the ´ace studio. Working with expanded photography, and also using what are normally considered intermediate results of the photographic process (negatives and slides), Mia articulated her images in different stages. In the artist’s own words:

There are countless sayings and philosophies that use windows as metaphors for the world, perception, and human experience. A window is not just an architectural element; it can be a portal to another place, a framed view of a different reality, or, for some, an entire world contained within its edges. After traveling around the world, the more I see, the more I wonder: what is real life? Windows shape the way we see; they reflect but separate, connect but refract. They do not exist in nature, and yet even in natural environments there are moments that feel like windows. Tree branches interact with each other and become their own kind of “windows,” blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, between the real and the reflected.

Reality often feels transparent yet impenetrable, reflecting and refracting depending on the angle of light and presence. I often lose myself in these moments of uncertainty, when clarity fades and gives way to questions. By photographing windows and ephemeral encounters, I seek to capture the metaphysical in the everyday, in those fluid, fleeting, and complex feelings. The images are not documentation or something abstract or distant, but something that is embedded in everything: in time, in light, and in the spaces that inhabit the atmospheres.

Within Apertures is a window into my time of production and contemplation during the four-week artist residency at Proyecto´ace. The creative processes encapsulate moments I have gone through, times filled with observation, curiosity, and encounters with the unknown, while also projecting forward, opening up to possibilities yet to unfold. This space contains both traces and the future, inviting you to cross a threshold where the boundaries between past and future, between reality and memory, begin to dissolve. Here, reflection is not just an image, but a continuous process of becoming. I have always considered history as a tool for understanding the present, and I believe that art can be an invaluable means of making the past visible.