清影

Foreword

People often ask me how I choose artists, and how I decide on an exhibition. Selection and decision-making are never one-sided. Each encounter with an artist has its own story, and while the answer may seem simple, it is difficult to explain in just a few words. Since founding INNA Art Space in Hangzhou in 2008, I have visited countless artists’ studios. Gradually, studio visits have become part of my working method, as well as a way for me to understand artists, the art ecosystem, and to continually locate my own position within it.

The studio is a site of experimentation, carrying the artist's unique aesthetics, perspective, and focus. At times, it feels like a temple; at times, like a battlefield; and at times, it is a place where everything is allowed to happen, and everything is allowed to go wrong. Through on-site conversations and observations, I am able to understand an artist’s practice in a more layered way. Many exhibitions and collaborations have grown slowly out of this process of observation, communication, and mutual understanding.

This spring and summer, I visited more than ten artists’ studios in New York and Hangzhou. Artists of different generations and backgrounds were each working in their own spaces with focus and repetition, dismantling and rebuilding: some were building models on a computer, some were wrestling with the “time crocodile,” some were trying to capture a faint glimmer on canvas, and some were writing words of complaint onto furniture. These concrete and vivid states of making moved me, and gave rise to the exhibition project “INNA Studio Visit”: to share a small slice of each artist’s practice with the audience in a relaxed and open way. It is both a public presentation of my working method over the years, and one of INNA’s ongoing group exhibition projects for the future: to continue visiting, continue watching, and continue sharing.

Foreword

People often ask me how I choose artists, and how I decide on an exhibition. Selection and decision-making are never one-sided. Each encounter with an artist has its own story, and while the answer may seem simple, it is difficult to explain in just a few words. Since founding INNA Art Space in Hangzhou in 2008, I have visited countless artists’ studios. Gradually, studio visits have become part of my working method, as well as a way for me to understand artists, the art ecosystem, and to continually locate my own position within it.

The studio is a site of experimentation, carrying the artist's unique aesthetics, perspective, and focus. At times, it feels like a temple; at times, like a battlefield; and at times, it is a place where everything is allowed to happen, and everything is allowed to go wrong. Through on-site conversations and observations, I am able to understand an artist’s practice in a more layered way. Many exhibitions and collaborations have grown slowly out of this process of observation, communication, and mutual understanding.

This spring and summer, I visited more than ten artists’ studios in New York and Hangzhou. Artists of different generations and backgrounds were each working in their own spaces with focus and repetition, dismantling and rebuilding: some were building models on a computer, some were wrestling with the “time crocodile,” some were trying to capture a faint glimmer on canvas, and some were writing words of complaint onto furniture. These concrete and vivid states of making moved me, and gave rise to the exhibition project “INNA Studio Visit”: to share a small slice of each artist’s practice with the audience in a relaxed and open way. It is both a public presentation of my working method over the years, and one of INNA’s ongoing group exhibition projects for the future: to continue visiting, continue watching, and continue sharing.

— Inna

"Studio Visit" is not merely a visit to an artist’s studio. In the contemporary art system, it first and foremost exists as an important mode of working between curators, museums, galleries, collectors, art advisors, and artists. At the same time, it is also an approach that differs from viewing art in a gallery setting. Compared to works that have already been installed and interpreted, “Studio Visit” brings us closer to the still-unfolding site of the artist’s creation and thinking: it focuses on the artist’s working methods, material choices, sources of imagery, lines of thought, creative rhythms, and how works come into being through continuous looking, revising, setting aside, completing, and starting anew.

In the international art context, "Studio Visit" has taken on a fairly systematic form. It serves as a key point of entry for galleries to understand artists and build collaborative relationships, and as a method for curators to conduct research and assess an artist’s long-term trajectory and the direction of their work. At the same time, it frequently appears in residency programs, institutional events, artist video archives, and interview projects. As such, “Studio Visit” is not just a private viewing of a studio or a point-to-point exchange between artist and visitor; it is also a mechanism within the art ecosystem that connects artists, institutions, the market, and the public.

"Studio Visit" is not merely a visit to an artist’s studio. In the contemporary art system, it first and foremost exists as an important mode of working between curators, museums, galleries, collectors, art advisors, and artists. At the same time, it is also an approach that differs from viewing art in a gallery setting. Compared to works that have already been installed and interpreted, “Studio Visit” brings us closer to the still-unfolding site of the artist’s creation and thinking: it focuses on the artist’s working methods, material choices, sources of imagery, lines of thought, creative rhythms, and how works come into being through continuous looking, revising, setting aside, completing, and starting anew.

In the international art context, "Studio Visit" has taken on a fairly systematic form. It serves as a key point of entry for galleries to understand artists and build collaborative relationships, and as a method for curators to conduct research and assess an artist’s long-term trajectory and the direction of their work. At the same time, it frequently appears in residency programs, institutional events, artist video archives, and interview projects. As such, “Studio Visit” is not just a private viewing of a studio or a point-to-point exchange between artist and visitor; it is also a mechanism within the art ecosystem that connects artists, institutions, the market, and the public.

For the general audience, however, "Studio Visit" is often invisible. Viewers usually only see works after they have already arrived in the exhibition space, rarely having the opportunity to access the working methods, spatial relationships, and generative paths behind the works. In fact, whether it is the working environment, preparatory drawings, images on the wall, materials on the table, repeatedly used tools, temporarily stored objects, or the finished works themselves—all can be seen as different slices of the artist’s creative labor. Together, they constitute the environment, methods, judgments, and mental states in which the artist continuously works.

The “INNA Studio Visit” project starts precisely from this way of seeing. It attempts to transform “Studio Visit” — something that ordinarily takes place within the art system — into a public-facing exhibition project. In this project, the studio is understood as a constellation of creative relationships: encompassing the artist’s labor and technique, as well as waiting, failure, chance, interests, habits, accumulated knowledge, lived experience, and why and under what conditions a work is defined as "finished" at a given stage. Through these traces from the studio, Inna Art Space hopes that viewers will not only see the work as a finished result, but also sense how the artist works continuously within specific spaces, times, and experiences.

This project grew out of Inna's recent studio visits. From April to June 2026, Inna visited the studios of four artists in New York. After returning to China, Inna continued to visit the studios of six more artists through ongoing exchanges and various encounters. Beyond pure research, these visits also formed a process through which Inna Art Space came to understand artists, selected artists, and built exhibition relationships.

In terms of exhibition presentation, Inna Art Space does not aim to recreate the studio or turn the artist’s private space into a spectacle. Instead, starting from their own working sites, the artists may choose works that respond to their creative state, or materials such as drafts, objects, sounds, or texts from their process, and together with Inna Art Space to organize and bring into the exhibition space. Through this, Inna Art Space hopes to build with artists and the public an exhibition relationship that is closer, more authentic, and more attentive to process.