From 'Archeology of Images' to Reconstructed 'Fable Narration'

A solo exhibition by Chai Mi, a Chinese artist who works across moving image, photography, painting, installation, text and performance, is currently on at Fotografiska Shanghai.

Titled "A's Fables, Whose Fables?" and scheduled to run through March 8, 2026, the exhibition traces Chai's practice over the past decade – moving from what she calls an "Archeology of Images" toward a reconstructed "Fable Narration" – inviting audiences to explore greater freedom in how we see and how we tell.

Since 2015, Chai has visited zoos in various cities, treating them as sites where watching relations between humans and animals unfold. Through handwriting, overpainting, printing and scanning, she "rewrites" existing images, imprinting them with traces of time and personal gesture.

Recurring "black bars" in her work – inspired by Roland Barthes' concept of the Punctum – create a visual window that obscures part of the picture while suggesting that the animals under gaze might be looking back through it toward a world beyond ours.

Beginning in 2018, Chai returned to Aesop's Fables, collaging and weaving gathered images and texts into her "A's Fables" series. These works break from conventional narrative logic, encouraging viewers to step out of the observer's position and feel connections across life forms through the interplay of image and parable.

If "A's Fables" represents a calm rethinking of narrative structure, her latest video work, "I Forgot but You Can Remember," shifts toward a more intimate and poetic register. Using cut paper, collage and stop-motion animation, the piece follows the perspective of a stray dog she adopted, interwoven with murmurs from letters to her daughter – gently opening a dreamscape that belongs to another.

The exhibition brings together two parallel strands in Chai's practice: a rational reconstruction of image and narrative, and a tender writing of life and memory. Walking among rewritten fables, reassembled images, and poetic video, viewers are invited to reconsider how we look, how we tell, and how, through retelling, we might arrive at greater freedom and understanding.

Date: Through March 8, 10:30am-11:00pm (no entry after 10pm)

Admission: 80 yuan/US$11.6 (weekdays), 100 yuan (weekends & public holidays)

Address: 127 Guangfu Rd, Jing'an District

静安区光复路 127号