Parliament of Things

Purist Gallery begins the exhibition with a deceptively simple yet persistently overlooked question: Are we willing to share agency with nonhuman entities that have never been given a seat in the chamber? Bruno Latour once identified a central flaw in modern politics: that only humans are granted a political voice, while things—especially nature, nonhuman beings, technologies, and ecosystems—are excluded from political consideration. Yet in truth, things have long been embedded in political processes; we have pretended they are mute or irrelevant. The practitioners in this exhibition therefore do not appear solely as designers, nor as penitents atoning for human impact, but as delegated interlocutors—speaking with and for chosen materials, ecologies, and algorithms. This marks a shift toward a negotiated relationship: one that is rooted in responsiveness. Accordingly, the exhibition space is not a chamber for definitive answers or emotional releases. It becomes a site of deliberation and negotiation — a Parliament of Things. Participating Creatives: Moe Asari, Damla Ertem, Jiawei Fan, Shutong Fan, Miyuki Guo (Hong Xing Mei Guo), Elinor Henry, Ana Ionescu, Daye Kim, Sander Nevejans, Boaz Parnas, Shaheer Tarar, Jack Watson, Ren Yao, Zoey Yang, Xinyuan Yu, Ivan Zahrebeniuk. Curator: Huiyu Lan, Tim C Huang