Half Cadence

Bringing together six photographic series by six photographers, half cadence examines photography’s potential to hold space for absence, suspension, and the complexities of transformation. The works reflect on the tension between individual agency and inherited cultural frameworks, attending to how personal identity, belonging, and the memory of the commonplace are negotiated in the interstices between articulation and silence. 

The title draws from a musical term: a half cadence concludes on the dominant, leaving the phrase unresolved. In this exhibition, half cadence becomes a photographic metaphor; the transition is emphasised over resolution. As Susan Sontag writes, ‘Between photographer and subject, there has to be distance.’ In half cadence, this distance is both temporal and spatial. It is not a lack or rupture, but a condition of vision itself. It is through simultaneous separation and proximity that the image takes form, enabling us to enter it as subjects. Some series unfold through fragments and loose narratives, while others construct gestures of quiet rebellion and stage a saturated realism. Each withholds overt expression, akin to a pause within a passage. Operating both as a collection and as a singular photographic work, they postpone definitive meaning, questioning the instability of perception and the continual flux of daily life.

Artists: 
Zhou Zhang @_zhouzzzz 
Xinyuan Yan @yxy_uan 
Xuan Feng @frederickfengo 
Yizhou Li @yizhou1017 
Gigi Yuxuan Zhang @gigi_zyx 
Yan Yang @saintjoeyoung 
 
Curated by Catherine Li @cath_erine_li and Xuan Feng @frederickfengo