Shannon Liang
Fourth Eye

Opening – Friday 6th September
Exhibition open until 22th September 

WET is proud to present Fourth Eye, a solo exhibition by Rotterdam-based artist Shannon Liang, at the INTRO space of the Hillevliet, opening on the 6th of September.

Shifting between interior reflections and collaborative exchanges, Fourth Eye looks for ways to make meaning from the daily experiences of our lives. While offering reflections on loss, sight, and memory, the exhibition draws from spiritual frameworks as prompts for connection and understanding.

The exhibition debuts the video work After Lasik, which begins with a recording of the laser vision correction surgery that left the artist with a ‘halo’ visual distortion in her left eye. In voiceover the video walks through the surgical procedure and tries to make sense of this minor loss of vision—this persistent ‘halo’—while considering the mechanics of vision and grief. Note: footage of the procedure is graphic, it’s ok to look away.

The video installation The Sun Burns An Image Into My Eye asks, are we permeable? Are the boundaries that separate us less clear than we think? Can we reach across distances through the things we hold on to—through what remains? The installation invites viewers to look closely at the transformative cycles meandering through mundane life—of baking, gardening, a sunburn, a leaky shower—to look for resonance.

Initially created in 2020 after the artist’s move from the US to Rotterdam, the video captured daily experiences of migration and adaptation. Liang sought to transform her feelings of alienation by turning her attention towards examples of interconnection and permeability in her surroundings. Three years later, following the sudden death of the artist’s then-partner, the cycles of living and dying within the video held deeper significance, and she revisited the work, adding a second video channel that allowed for another relationship to time, to seeing, and to memory. The two channels weave together themes of life, death, decay, and regeneration, questioning our permeability.

Touching Feeling invites viewers for divinatory card readings that combine I Ching and Tarot divination systems, bridging Liang’s Eastern and Western migratory heritage. In these readings, both the artist and the participants have equal authority over interpretation—working together to make sense of images, questions, experiences, and feelings. 

Touching Feeling will be performed during the Groot Rotterdams Atelier Weekend on the 21st – 22nd September. 

You can sign up for a card reading here.

Shannon Liang is an artist based in Rotterdam and New York, whose work arises from a process of daily documentation and self archiving. Shannon’s practice spans writing, video installation, performance, and drawing. Born in Baltimore, she is a recent graduate of the Piet Zwart Institute MFA programme in Rotterdam.

Image credit: Shannon Liang