Join us for a special artist talk with Zhang Xiaoli, presented in conjunction with her solo exhibition Traveller.
During the talk, Zhang Xiaoli will introduce key works from the exhibition and reflect on its theatrical structure, where the visual language of Chinese landscape painting is reimagined through LEGO®. Moving across the exhibition’s four chapters—Prologue, Scenes, Open Rehearsal, and Into the Play—she will share how ideas of play, reconstruction, and translation shape her practice.
In this talk, Zhang Xiaoli will introduce her recently developed “LEGO®-script,” a visual-textual system that transforms modular bricks into a form of calligraphy. Inspired by classical sources such as the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, this system reinterprets traditional pictorial grammar through a contemporary and playful lens. Through reading and deciphering these image-text structures, the work opens a path into Zhang Xiaoli’s constructed LEGO® landscape, where images and meanings are continuously formed through modular logic.
The talk will conclude with an interactive session. Participants are invited to engage directly with the LEGO®-script by assembling and interpreting forms together with the artist. In this moment, the viewer becomes part of the unfolding narrative, stepping into the role of the traveller within the work.
