‘For a Little While’

Bingge Liu, Brea Freeburn, Chao Liu, Chenyu Wang, Ember Wanbo Li, HAO JIANG, Hengtai Zhang,
Lauren Royall, Jiangyu Huang, Mathew Duan, Mingzhu Wu, Muyao Li, Nare Joo, Natalie Ku,
Xiaoming Ai, Yue Wu, Yun Wen, Zimeng Zhang.

Presented by ArtOrb × Apsara Studio
Curated by Xin Liu
As part of London Design Festival 2026

September 18-20, 2026. Apsara Studio, 200 Battersea Park Rd, SW11 4ND London.

For a Little While, 2026. Installation view at Apsara Studio. Courtesy of the artist and ArtOrb.

For a Little While asks us to look again, not at what will remain, but at what is already passing.

We often understand the value of things through what remains: what can be preserved, remembered, or returned to. Yet much of human experience is defined by what cannot last, a
fleeting encounter, a changing landscape, a passing feeling, or a moment that disappears before we fully recognise it. For a Little While brings together eighteen artists from different cultural backgrounds and artistic practices to explore this condition of the ephemeral. Through painting, photography, moving image, sculpture, installation and digital media, the exhibition considers how temporary experiences can leave lasting traces in the body, in memory, and in the way we perceive the world. Curated by Xin Liu, an independent curator and cultural researcher based in London, the exhibition approaches ephemerality not simply as the passing of time, but as a condition that can emerge through material, space, perception and social experience. Rather than imposing a single interpretation, the exhibition allows different artistic practices to meet around a shared question: how do we look at the people, spaces, feelings and experiences that we can only possess for a little while?

In Bingge Liu’s A Mountain, or Something Like It, pigment moves across silk through the action of water, allowing an image of a mountain to emerge without ever becoming fully fixed. The work considers how an image is formed through the interaction between material, light and perception. Brea Freeburn’s Breathing Field I similarly explores the movement between containment and release, using layers of pigment and material to create a surface that seems to gather, disperse and reorganise itself.

Ember Wanbo Li’s Water Slices II translates the fleeting vibration of water into layered acrylic structures. What was once a temporary physical event becomes a material trace, while changing light and viewing positions continue to alter the work. Lauren Royall’s Rack Remains approaches temporality through the ageing and transformation of materials, where remaining becomes not a state of permanence but one of residue, decay and possible renewal.

Other works extend the idea of the ephemeral beyond material states. Chenyu Wang’s Performing Status in Everyday Consumption examines how social identities and structures of
class are repeatedly performed through everyday rituals of consumption. Jiangyu Huang’s Spatial Capital considers space as a system shaped by position, rules and social relationships, asking how long one can occupy a given place within such structures.

In Xiaoming Ai’s The Fixed Fire, fire becomes a metaphor for time, persistence and inevitable transformation. Yue Wu’s A View from No One considers the relationship between perspective and presence through the possibility of AI occupying multiple viewpoints simultaneously. Yun Wen’s Pearl Necklace turns towards departure and its emotional residue, while Zimeng Zhang’s Snowing transforms a fleeting view of snowfall into a small, lasting object through silver, enamel and light.

Together, these works form a temporary structure around time, memory, material and perception. The exhibition does not attempt to preserve the ephemeral, but to consider what
happens when we remain with it long enough to truly see it.

For a Little While, 2026. Installation view at Apsara Studio. Courtesy of the artist and ArtOrb.