Procrustean

Eva Chenyao He's pairs cold clinical hardware with flesh-like resin and glass to ask whether the body was ever soft to begin with.

From 26 August to 17 September 2026, Eva Chenyao He's solo project "Procrustean" is presented at COLLECTA's Shanghai space. The exhibition text is written by Yu Peihua, and the show marks her first solo project presented in China since graduating.

This is He Chenyao's first systematic public presentation of her practice since completing her BFA in Fine Arts at The Cooper Union in New York and an exchange semester at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. He Chenyao (b. 2001, Shenzhen) lives and works between Shenzhen and New York; her practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, and video, focused on the systemic, de-subjectifying force she calls "quiet violence."

The new works continue her use of resin and kiln-formed glass. Resin, in her hands, simulates the texture of metal, skin, organs, or remains, curing into a glossy surface whose making is hard to trace; kiln-formed glass carries a fine, granular texture and a dry translucency, more fragile than resin, a second metaphor for flesh. Both materials depend on external molds or modeling files to take shape. "A replicated reality is also a reality," she said in interview, describing a premise underlying the whole body of work: authenticity no longer circles a single original, but is built from copies, substitutions, and repetitions, much as a meme grows blurrier and rounder at its edges with every share, acquiring what she calls a digital-age patina.

Asked whether this reading risks narrowing into a specifically feminine sensibility, her response was direct: "A female perspective is a human perspective. A female artist is an artist. I don't need to seek legitimacy for that." The soft colors and low saturation in her work, she said, function as both shelter and trap, an appearance of harmlessness that, looked at closely, conceals a quiet cruelty.

TITLE: Procrustean
ARTIST: Eva Chenyao He
TEXT: Yu Peihua
VENUE: COLLECTA Shanghai

Eva Chenyao He, it took over my gravity, detail, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, piercing, 3D-printed photopolymer resin, stainless steel cranial retractor, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, hold me tight, detail, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, marrow, detail, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, the soaked dirt sighs of its cold ashes, detail, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, ear tag, detail, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

Eva Chenyao He, 3 in 1, installation view, COLLECTA Shanghai, 2026

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