Cui Jinzhe: The 36 Days I Roam
Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, Edmonton, AB - Jan 16 – Feb 28, 2026
In The 36 Days I Roam – Chapter 2, her artist’s book (scroll) from 2023, Cui Jinzhe merges calligraphy and dreamlike vignettes into a continuous visual journey. Inked mountains, ancient temples and mythical creatures unfold in lyrical progression across pale parchment. Through interplays between line and rhythm, Jinzhe combines the visual language of traditional Chinese painting with contemporary modes of abstraction and graphic expression.
In this forthcoming exhibition, Jinzhe transforms the gallery into an immersive, living scroll where painting, Chinese calligraphy, poetry and performance intertwine to explore the relationships between pictorial imagery, tactile materials and architectural form. Rooted in her ongoing series of the same title, The 36 Days I Roam reflects Jinzhe’s fascination with how traditional practices can be reimagined through time-based configurations and spatial experience.
Emerging from her three artists’ books in classical Chinese formats—the album, hand scroll and folding sheet—the exhibition extends the artist’s ongoing inquiry into the relationship between form, gesture and perception. As Jinzhe reinterpreted these forms, she discovered their potential to become sculptural and performative—miniature screens expanding into movable murals, brushstrokes transforming into gestures of the body. This evolution from intimate object to immersive environment underscores the interdependence of image and form. Art historian Wu Hung describes this relationship in The Double Screen, where he writes that in Chinese art, the image and the object are inseparable. Jinzhe brings this idea vividly to life, allowing structure to shape perception and movement to complete the work.
The exhibition incorporates three large-scale screen-painting installations, layered soundscapes and a 36-day live performance series. Each day, Jinzhe will perform an improvisation inspired by her 2024 book The 36 Days I Roam: A Long Poem and a Series of Paintings, reflecting on her travels through Dunhuang’s Mogao Caves and the temples of Lhasa. Through gesture, calligraphy and voice, she transforms painting into a time-based meditation on transformation itself—an evolving dialogue between material, memory and the living trace of the artist’s hand.
