Contextile 2026
”A Change in the Weather?” Material storytelling in a age of uncertainty
Curated by Janis Jefferies
5 Sept - 29 Nov 2026
Movana Chen: Beyond the Surface, A Home for All
Beyond The Surface (2024 - ongoing) is a deeply personal exploration of human identity and connection, beginning with Movana Chen collecting expired passports in person from people willing to share them and offer their individual stories. Chen describes this process as representative of 'our human need - this pure love, not an identity of paper'. In keeping with her practice, Chen then shreds the passports, deconstructing the individual identity, and knits the strands together, intertwined with the passports of others, (re)constructing one large, interconnected body.
A Home for All is a collaborative project that explores belonging, interconnectedness, and shared creation. Beginning with a single paper map - once used for navigation - Chen cuts, shreds, and transforms it into thread. Within the exhibition, visitors are invited to sit, knit, and add their own stitches to the growing sculpture. Each gesture becomes part of a shared work in progress: an open, communal home created by many hands. “I don’t believe in ‘me’, I believe in ‘we’.”
Opening performance: 5 Sept 2026, 5pm
Galeria Garagem Avenida, Av. D. Afonso Henriques, 250, Guimarães, Portugal
IN:Visible.home by Movana Chen and Nikolaï Denz
In the opening performance, IN:Visible.home which expands the themes of the exhibition A Change in the Weather?, the performance explores writing and calligraphy as ephemeral gestures through breath, presence, and movement. it invites a silent, invisible dialogue between performers, memory, space, and the audience.
Together, we will discover that home is not where we belong, but how we tend to the places, stories, and people that connect us across time. Home is a shared, living, ever-changing body, continually shaped through care, mutual support, and love.
Home is not a place.
Home lives in our hearts.
Artwork:
Beyond the surface, 2024-ongoing
Knitted, shredded travel documents
1500 x 20 x 5cm
Burger Collection and the TOY Family.
Courtesy Movana Chen via Flowers Gallery, London & Hong Kong
Special thanks for all the contributors who donated their passports for this growing artwork.
Photo by Movana Chen
A Home for All, 2024-ongoing
Knitted, shredded maps
140 x 240cm
Courtesy Movana Chen
Special thanks for all the participants who being part at this collaborative project.
Photo by Oleksandra Shakhnovska