Drifting Bodies: Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan's Exhibition on Water Politics at Storefront NYC

Building on their exploration of the complex relationship between water, indigenous communities, and global infrastructure, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan utilize film installation to engage with the hidden narratives of Thailand’s indigenous people and their entanglement with hydroelectric power and international energy networks. For the artists, water represents a multifaceted element: a life source, a disruptor, a tool of displacement, and a connector of distant lands.

The works on view will delve into the intertwined dynamics of resource extraction and the impact of industrial processes on both local environments and global networks. In this context, the installation recontextualizes iconic sites such as Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir and Singapore’s Jewel waterfall, tracing the material flows that link these places while highlighting the often-overlooked consequences for the communities affected. Through extensive fieldwork, the artists use film to reveal how the energy that powers cities far from its source is deeply rooted in the life worlds of displaced peoples, turning Storefront into a space of reflection on the intersections of energy, environment, and indigenous resilience.

The exhibition will open at Storefront for Art and Architecture in January 2025.

Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan were selected as the winners of the Open Call by a jury including Sarah Herda, Director, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Yina Jiménez Suriel, The Current IV Curatorial Fellow, TBA21–Academy; Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, MoMA; Humberto Moro, Deputy Director of Program, Dia Art Foundation; Gean Moreno, Director, Knight Foundation Art + Research Center, ICA Miami; and Diya Vij, Curator, Creative Time.

About Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan

Jingru (Cyan) Cheng works across architecture, anthropology, and filmmaking. Her practice follows drifting bodies—from rural migrant workers to forms of water—to confront intensified social injustice and ecological crisis.

Cyan is a Harvard GSD 2023 Wheelwright Prize recipient for TRACING SAND. Her work has been exhibited internationally as part of Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics at ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2020–2022), Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2019), Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), among others, and is included in the Architectural Association’s permanent collection.

Cyan holds a PhD by Design and M.Phil Projective Cities from the Architectural Association and was the co-director of AA Wuhan Visiting School from 2015–2017. She co-led the MA architectural design studio Politics of the Atmosphere from 2019–2022, and currently teaches an interdisciplinary module across all schools at the Royal College of Art in London. She is also Canadian Centre for Architecture’s 2024–2025 CCA-Mellon Multidisciplinary Researcher on field research as a land-dependent practice.

Chen Zhan is an architect, anthropologist, and independent filmmaker, trained at the Architectural Association and SOAS University of London respectively. Since 2019, Chen has used film as a collaborative medium to conduct long-term research-oriented projects. Her projects include Orchid, Bee and I, a fictional ethnography reflecting on personal and collective experiences of living through the climate crisis and the Covid pandemic, and RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING, a transdisciplinary endeavor that tunes into how Chinese rural migrant workers make worlds.

As an Architects Registration Board (ARB) registered architect, Chen has worked on various award-winning projects across scales and sectors internationally since 2011, including the Maggie’s Cancer Care Center in Leeds, UK. Chen is currently part of the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s CCA-Mellon multidisciplinary research group—In the Hurricane, On the Land—looking into field research as a land-dependent practice.

Cheng and Zhan’s joint project RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING received two commendations from the Royal Institute of British Architects President’s Awards for Research in 2020 and 2018, the Architecture Short Film Award at the Milano Design Film Festival in 2024, and the Best Short Film at the Venice Architecture Film Festival in 2023.

About Storefront

Storefront for Art and Architecture amplifies ideas that contribute to the understanding of the built environment through artistic practice. Since its founding in 1982, Storefront has produced and presented work at the intersection of art and architecture through exhibitions, events and public programming.

Swamplands is Storefront’s year-long research project and exhibition series focused on the ethical and technical entanglements of water. Through a close look at the murky soil and unstable grounds of swamps as a conceptual framework to highlight the ecological and socioeconomic intricacies that lie at the threshold between bodies of water and land. In addition to this open call, Storefront presents three newly commissioned works and exhibitions that are anchored alongside the coast of the Gulf of Mexico by artists Imani Jacqueline Brown, Gala Porras-Kim, and Fred Schmidt-Arenales. This multi-sited project will continue to unfold through public programs, radio broadcasts, a research fellowship, an open call, and a thematic reader connecting with other geographies dealing with the increasing complexities of wetlands. The open call is a strategy used by Storefront since its early years to engage a wider public with this theme and serve as a platform for new ideas.

^{Main image: Chen Zhan, Field documentation: Jewel Changi Airport Waterfall, Singapore, 2024. Courtesy the artist}