“Antenna-tenna” is honored to announce the solo exhibition Tan Jing: Scent Hall Linger.

Duration: 2025.11.01 – 2025.12.23

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Press Release

Chapter 73 of Dream of the Red Chamber recounts how the simple-minded maid, Simple, from the Grandmother’s quarters, accidentally found a multi-colored embroidered pouch in the rockeries of the Grand View Garden. Unaware of its nature due to her innocence, she was playing with it when Lady Xing intercepted her. Lady Wang, upon seeing it, was enraged. Heeding the slanderous advice of Wang Shanbao’s wife, she immediately ordered the garden gates locked and conducted a candlelight search. That single night marked a sudden turn in the fates of its dwellers, shattered the Garden’s innocence, and laid bare the declining fortunes of the Jia family.

Within this narrative, the embroidered pouch, as evidence of desire, is perceived as a threat to the patriarchal order and discipline of the Grand View Garden. Yet this very “contamination” is itself a soft yet corrosive medium of affect, silently seeping through the walls of discipline through carriers like scent or image. The historical tension between the forbidden and its infiltration of emotion and desire serves as the starting point for Tan Jing’s inquiry in this exhibition.

Following on from her long-standing research into olfactory substances, Tan Jing combs through Ming and Qing literature, books of ancient incense formulation, and cross-cultural studies of witches’ herbology, drawing references from records of scents and botanical metaphors with clandestine connections to temptation. Her methodology resembles that of an experimental cook, engaging in “recipe experiments” to recreate the scents ascribed with intoxication in these texts. She further transforms the study of “affection” and “desire” into the construction of a spatial experience. Through the combination of materials, the participation of “wind” as a fluid element, and the imperceptible permeation of sweetness and heat, she conjures an “affective” moment as if by witchcraft. Within this environment, visitors navigate by scent and light into an infectious, sticky, and embodied state of mesmerizing yearning.

In her choice of mediums, the artist intentionally employs and develops porous materials that change organically over time. The ceramic panels supporting the incense works, with their veined and porous surfaces, act as visual metaphors for material permeability while also recording the traces of burnt incense ash. The suspended paper curtains, seeping with aromatic oil, intervene in the space with their translucency; like classical pierced screens, they seem to divide yet also invite. Scents diffuse with the gentle sway of the paper, evoking a more synesthetic mode of viewing. The relief wall, fused from aphrodisiac scents and wall coating, bears mottled stains akin to the grease marks left over time on dance hall walls, as if clinging to skin. These substances engage in a slow, enduring exchange with their surroundings, including the bodies of visitors, inviting them to linger and sense the gradual intensification of desirous tension within their senses. This entire installation evokes the dark dance halls of Chaoshan, China, pink wooden boards obscure views, window frames allow slivers of light. At night, middle-aged and elderly women shed part of themselves, donning another identity and their cherished outfits to meet their dance partners. The dim, uneven lighting spills onto their skin, while the air hangs heavy with the mingled scents of sweat, perfume, and flesh.

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Antenna-Tenna

B1-7, 9 Qufu Road, Jing’an, Shanghai

Wednesday to Saturday 11:00 – 18:30