In May 2025, ArtFlow Studio Ltd – a London-based curatorial and creative agency – presented Metamorph, a group exhibition at Espacio Gallery. The show featured over 20 emerging artists (full list of contributing creatives below), who explored how personal identity is shaped and reshaped by social norms and cultural expectations.
Curated by ArtFlow founders Hongqian Zhang and Huan Zhou, Metamorph asked: how much of our inner world reflects the outside? The exhibition used painting, installation, video, and digital media to reflect on transformation, perception and the tension between self and society.
Questions around identity and perception, like “how much of our internal life is shaped by external factors?”, have been central to artistic discourse for decades. Think Cindy Sherman – the artist famed for depicting herself as various imagined characters. Her Untitled Film Stills (1977-1908) series was all about the dissonance between appearances and reality; she criticised mid-20th century “B Movies” by casting herself as stereotypical female archetypes: the jaded seductress, unhappy housewife, jilted lover and vulnerable naif. Meanwhile, the likes of Barbara Kruger and the Guerilla Girls were challenging audiences to think more critically about the narratives pushed by advertising campaigns, and the gaps in representation across art and culture. This is a line of enquiry that continues to be relevant today, with contemporary lens-based artists like Sarah Maple, Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Zanele Muholi asserting the right to see and be seen, often rejecting the social and political frameworks that dictate the status quo.
This is where Metamorph comes in, a recent exhibition that explored how individuals adapt, transform and reshape themselves to fit societal standards. The show presents perception as a reciprocal process – humanity’s ideas shape the world, and it shapes us right back. The display was curated by ArtFlow founders Hongqian Zhang and Huan Zhou – a duo with a shared vision of building inclusive and globally connected art platforms. Zhang is a designer who harnesses the power of images, space and visual communication to construct exhibitions with identity and narrative. Zhou, meanwhile, has a background in cultural studies and spatial curation, and is passionate about cultivating meaningful public engagement.
Metamorph spotlighted more than 20 such practitioners and contemplated a single question: is it possible to view things as they really are, or do we always see through the myopic lens of our own experiences and identity? Ole Podyman’s painting, Perceptual Bloom, is a case-in-point. It depicts a cluster of seemingly simple flowers. For some, the petals radiate warmth, joy and memory, whilst others see the same shapes dissolve into melancholy, stillness – or even dread. The artist explains: “The painting plays with duality – light versus shadow, vibrance versus dullness – drawing the eye into a perceptual push and pull. There is no single truth in the image, only a mirror held up to the viewer’s own emotional terrain.” This piece considers the subjectivity of perception, becoming a lens through which the viewer projects their internal state.
Elsewhere, Xueer Bi’s I’ve Seen You Three Times, picked up on the same theme. Here, a single plant is rendered in three different styles – realistic, abstract and emotive – to explore the fluid nature of seeing and remembering. It reminds us that memories are subjective, rewritten by the hands of time. Sansan Xie, meanwhile, took this idea in a different direction, considering how the same experience can cause varying reactions in different people. The artist combines fabric, light and spatial design to explore the impact of weather on mental health, particularly Seasonal Affective Disorder. Meanwhile, Abbas Khan looked at the dissonance between the idea of living in London, and the reality of settling down in the city.
Beyond perception, much of this show’s power lay in its examination of an individual’s most formative and profound experiences – educational institutions, family relationships, the place in which they grow up – and how they shape a life. Anning Song’s mixed-media project Brand and Scar, for example, highlights the psychological and social consequences of cyberbulling. In 2023, almost 20% of UK children aged 10 to 15 experienced online harassment. This is a shocking statistic. Song also considers how pervasive misinformation erodes trust in objective truth and recognised facts, explaining: “each click and share acts like a virus, accelerating dissemination, benefiting malicious creators, and inadvertently deepening the psychological trauma of victims.” The artist holds up a timely and unsettling mirror to life online.
Metamorph did not shy away from bringing these difficult conversations to the surface. The complexities of adolescence were also the focus of Jingchen Han’s Yuzhang Academy – a raw and emotive piece exploring how disciplinary forces within education systems suppress individual expression, and thus shape feelings towards the body. The artist suspended raw meat alongside a photobook, creating tension and inviting viewers to reflect on the limits of autonomy in contemporary society. Also featured was Mengzhu Li, whose intimate self portraits reflect on shifting family dynamics in the wake of her father’s death.
Through these profound and nuanced works, Metamorph spoke to one of the pervading missions of contemporary art: to cut through the noise and reflect the world back at us. It’s an admirable task, and a job that likely will never be finished, but each piece of art brings us closer to what it means to be human.
Artists Exhibited: Wei Xie, Xintong Cai, Sansan Xie, Xinyue Liang, Xiaobin Zhang, Xiaoran Fan, Xueer Bi, Ruiben He, Lexiong Ying, Zijing Deng, Jingchen Han, Abbas Khan, Jiaqi Liao, Yuke Cao, Lillian Zhu, Anning Song, Mengzhu Li, Longfei Jiang, Podyman Alice, Jiani Deng, Hongqian Zhang, Binghao Guo, Qinwen Yan.
Words: Emma Jacob
Image credits:
- Image courtesy of Sansan Xie.
- Image courtesy of Abbas Khan.
- Image courtesy of Sansan Xie.
- Image courtesy of Mengzhu Li.
- Image courtesy of Sansan Xie.
- Image courtesy of Abbas Khan.
- Installation shot. Metamorph.
