Joseph Cornell, an acclaimed American modern surrealist artist, gained recognition for his practice of preserving collected objects in glass shadow boxes. To him, these seemingly outdated and useless items were once beautiful and held precious stories. His lush imagination wove these relics together, often infusing them with the delicate scent of nostalgia. Despite their confinement within the box, these compositions transcend the boundaries of time and space to embody the beauty of the commonplace.

Learning from Cornell emerge like an artistic dialogue between Cornell and Zhao Xiaoli. Post her 2015 graduation from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Zhang embarked on an odyssey in the city. Each brief sojourn in her small rented apartment, almost always lasting just a year, became a vessel for memories of that time period. Zhang likened herself to "an annual herb, rooted, sprouted, and flourished for a year in a box-like square space; then leaves fell, roots left, only to root and sprout again in another space." For Zhang, a box emerges as a narrative space, cradling tales and capturing fleeting moments, and resonating with Cornell’s nostalgic conception. Learning from Cornell echoes in Zhang's mental expanse at that particular moment, where a tree embodies both a symbol of contemporary attachment to literati culture and a "spiritual landscape" of solitude amid the bustling city.