In her solo exhibition Rituals of Escape at aolab Gallery, Shanghai, artist Jing Zhou invites viewers into a quiet but deliberate act of resistance. The space feels calm on the surface, yet the work inside it speaks directly to something deeper.
Her practice emerged not from academic theory or institutional pressure, but from personal necessity. For years, Zhou navigated the exhausting cycle familiar to many: long commutes, endless deadlines, dark mornings, and cold nights. The rhythm of modern work life had become something more than routine. It was repetition without choice. Her art began as a way to break that loop.
This reclaiming of repetition grew directly from personal experience, not from theory. Yet over time, the language of her work has found unexpected parallels. In Zen practice, repetition offers a path toward awareness through attention. In the work of Agnes Martin and Louise Bourgeois, repeated forms become containers for memory, control, or repair. Zhou’s art is not a response to these traditions, but it speaks beside them. What began as a way to breathe has become a visual system for staying present in a world that rarely allows it.
“I felt like I was living the same day again and again,” Zhou says. “There was no space to feel. I started drawing patterns because it was the only time I could breathe. Repetition became mine, not something forced on me.”
The work in this exhibition holds close to that idea. Across canvas and paper, circles, lines, and soft geometries repeat with slight variation. Some pieces appear structured, even mathematical at first glance. But linger longer, and they begin to feel less about logic and more about attention. About staying with a feeling long enough to understand it. About creating space inside sameness.
In one piece, Zhou uses closely stitched thread as a visual metaphor for how we hold ourselves together under the pressure of corporate consumption. The texture is raw in places, delicate in others. There is no push for perfection. Instead, there is patience. A
willingness to stay inside the act of making. The result is a vocabulary of forms that resists excess. Nothing is wasted. Every mark matters.
The setting of aolab Gallery adds to the weight of the show. Located in one of Shanghai’s most quietly experimental art districts, aolab is a space that favours process over spectacle. The gallery’s openness, its play with shadow and light, allows repetition to take on dimension. Time stretches. The viewer is not asked to decode anything. Only to stay.
What gives the show its real strength is not just visual discipline. It is the emotional clarity. These are not abstract designs for their own sake. They are records of effort. Repetition, for Zhou, is not about sameness. It is about staying present, even when the world feels designed to make us disappear.
This clarity has also resonated outside China. In the past year alone, Zhou has exhibited in multiple UK venues, including London’s Mall Galleries and M P Birla Millennium Art Gallery. These shows explored similar themes of stillness, pressure, ritual and self discovery. Her ability to speak across cultures, without compromising her voice, is part of what makes her work so immediate.
Her work doesn’t belong to any single country or visual tradition. It speaks from a personal place, shaped by the effort to stay human in a world that often feels mechanical.
What she offers is not spectacle. It is structure, care, and consistency. In a landscape often overwhelmed by urgency, Jing Zhou offers another rhythm. One built on slow returns. On choices reclaimed. On patterns that do not numb, but open.
For those still caught in the grind of daily life, her work offers something simple but essential: a place to pause, reflect, and perhaps a chance to begin again.
