Week 10 | Ji Ju Collective : Weaving “Our Shell” at Summerhall
The culmination of Week 10 saw the opening of Our Shell at Summerhall, Edinburgh, a group exhibition curated by and featuring the Ji Ju Collective. Moving beyond a mere display of objects, the project functioned as a critical inquiry into the hermit crab condition: the constant negotiation of identity, memory, and domesticity within the precarious shells of a migratory life.
1.Collective Action as Method: From Theory to Site
Our exhibition navigated the tension between cultural roots and the temporary shells we inhabit while living abroad. By using red threads to physically connect disparate works, from traditional Qipao to contemporary paintings, we transformed a static gallery room into a living, interconnected organism.
This approach resonates with Miwon Kwon’s discourse on the evolution of site-specificity. She argues that the site has shifted from a fixed physical location to a discursive, mobile network:
The final ‘site’ or frame for art reception and dissemination in this appraisal is no less than the artist–producer and the sometimes transitive and site-less communities of the early 21st century.
By framing our collective as a site-less community, we demonstrated that curatorial practice can create a sense of belonging that is not tied to a specific geography, but to shared experience and material as a way of thinking.
Curating is famous for an ordered appearance that on quick inspection is always flawed. Exhibitions always give the impression of cohesion when in fact what is exhibited is often the result of many compromises, concessions, and trade- offs between institutions,funders, lenders, contexts, and/or artists.
This flawed cohesion was evident in how we balanced individual artistic voices within the Ji Ju Collective. For my final project, I will embrace these compromises not as failures, but as an ethical method of sourcing and displaying artists, ensuring that the tension between different materialities remains visible rather than smoothed over.
This flawed cohesion was evident in how we balanced individual artistic voices within the Ji Ju Collective. For my final project, I will embrace these compromises not as failures, but as an ethical method of sourcing and displaying artists, ensuring that the tension between different materialities remains visible rather than smoothed over.
3.Inspiration for My Personal Project
Figure 1. English visual identity and exhibition poster for Our Shell, designed by the Ji Ju Collective, 2026.
Figure 2. Chinese visual identity and exhibition poster for Our Shell, designed by the Ji Ju Collective, 2026.
Figure 3. English exhibition statement outlining the curatorial narrative of Our Shell, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2026. Photograph by the author.
Figure 4. Chinese exhibition statement for Our Shell, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2026. Photograph by the author.
Figure 5. Siqi Xue. Candy Art Installation. Installation view demonstrating the use of red thread as a spatial connecting device to link fragmented narratives, Our Shell, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2026. Photograph by the author.
Notes:
1.Kwon, Miwon, and Scott Townsend. Review of One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Visual Communication (London, England) 4, no. 3 (October 2005): 372.
2.Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2020. Curating As Ethics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Accessed March 30, 2026. ProQuest Ebook Central,xxii.