After spending nearly one month at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-SZ), Peng Ke and Zhao Qian, a Chinese artist duo known as “Play Under,” put an exhibition on display at the university’s TC101 SPACE on Friday.

The exhibition, titled “Play Under the Table,” is part of the university’s 22nd Artist-in-Residence program. The program consists of four workshops: an exhibition with artist-guided tours, a lecture, a practical course on photography and an arts clinic where students can visit with the artists face-to-face.

The exhibition is divided into three parts. In addition to a selection of artworks created by the artists from 2019 and 2021 and works from Zhao’s long-term project “A Field Guide,” it also presents the “Ballooning” series that includes artworks jointly created through four workshops by the artists and some students.

The students who participated in the workshops were presented with texts, images and other materials that centered around the key word “ballooning,” the process by which young spiders move through the air by releasing threads to catch the wind, and were required to come up with their own plans and finally create their own artworks with guidance from the artists.

Dedicated to the art of images, last year the artists founded Play Under in Shanghai. Peng was born in Changsha, Hunan Province, and grew up in Shenzhen. As the winner and nominee of several international awards in photography, she has focused on urban experience and image production.

Zhao is the winner of the 2019 Annual Photography Fellowship Awards by the Houston Center for Photography and has focused on human activities and the environment around him.

The CUHK-SZ initiated the annual Artist-in-Residence programs in 2016 to invite artists from various fields to reside at the campus and create artworks with, give lectures to, and hold workshops for teachers and students of the university.

(Lin Lin)