To describe the human condition is to create a landscape — mutable, intricate, and alive. It stretches across the visible and the invisible, the tender and the unknowable, shifting with every gesture of memory and perception. Within this vast terrain, six artists — Ciane Xavier, Thea Quiachon, Tintin Lontoc, Hae Ryun, Shireen Co, and Noor Bahjat — traverse their own coordinates, offering glimpses of how being human might look, feel, and transform through the language of paint and image.
In “The Shape of Tender Ground”, their works do not seek to define human behavior, or the human experience or even humanity in itself; rather, they dwell in its thresholds. They explore how we inhabit our bodies, our memories, and the worlds we build between ourselves and others. Each artist, in their own way, maps the fragile geographies of their idea of the human, unrestricted — places where identity dissolves, time folds, and silence becomes eloquent.
