Mocube is pleased to announce that we will host artist Luan Xueyan's latest solo exhibition, Summer in Dalniy, on March 20, 2025. This will be Luan Xueyan's second solo exhibition at Mocube, following Tuī Jiān Rǔ in 2022. The exhibition will run until May 5, 2025.

The title Summer in Dalniy references a rhetorical style characteristic of the 1980s, where the structure “Place + zhī(of) + Season/Time” was commonly used in literary titles during the early years of China’s Reform and Opening-Up. This naming convention retains traces of collectivist-era narratives while simultaneously hinting at the emerging shift toward lyrical individualism in the arts. The 1980s, undoubtedly, marked a pivotal historical juncture—a transition from grand narratives to personal experiences and the formative years for those born in the 1970s.

“Dalniy” is the old name for Dalian. As the first child born to her parents after they returned to the city from the countryside, Luan Xueyan lived there until the age of ten. This strategically significant port city in Northeast Asia has long been a contested site of geopolitical interests. After the First Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century, Japan took control of the Liaodong Peninsula, including Dalian. However, four years later, Russia seized the area under a leasehold agreement. Tsar Nicholas II then sought to model Dalian’s urban layout after Paris, with a radial plan extending from a central square—Nikolayev Square. It was during this period that the city was named Dalniy, a transliteration of the Russian word for “distant.” In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Japan wrested control of the peninsula from Russia and occupied Dalian for the next forty years. In 1945, Soviet troops entered the city, remaining there until their full withdrawal in 1955. During this time, Nikolayev Square underwent multiple renamings and is now known as Zhongshan Square. Following the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the administrative status of Lüda City (now Dalian) shifted several times between direct central control and provincial governance, before being officially renamed Dalian in 1981.

In 2022, during a visit home, Luan Xueyan’s mother entrusted her with a collection of embroidered fabric samples. These were prototypes of machine embroidery designs created by her mother between 1966 and 1969 while working at the Dalian Arts and Crafts Company. As a young designer freshly assigned to a collective enterprise after graduating from university—transitioning from a background in Chinese painting—her mother’s daily work contributed to securing numerous orders for the company at the Canton Fair. These items, traditionally passed from mother to daughter, carried a deeply personal and familial significance. Among them, a particular pattern depicting three fisherwomen mending a net—imbued with the essence of Dalian’s local life—became the conceptual starting point for Summer in Dalniy. The following year, Luan revisited Dalian and made an unexpected discovery: the dilapidated building at the far end of the so-called “Russian Style Street” was, in fact, the former Dalian Natural History Museum—a place where she had often lingered as a child while sketching bird specimens with her mother. Now abandoned, the building had revealed its original identity: the former Dalniy City Hall. In that moment, childhood memories violently collided with the city’s layered past, as if all those vivid scenes from her early years had suddenly found their answers—Certain, uncertain...