NORITO is pleased to present Post-Edenic, the debut solo exhibition of Eve Yifan Jiang (b. 1992, China), following her two-person presentation at the gallery in May 2025.
'Temperament determines material; material determines temperament,' says Jiang, whose early formation made ink on silk an almost inevitable medium, even as its demanding discipline has shaped her into an exacting and cautious painter. Unlike more permissive media such as oil, ink on silk allows little revision and requires sustained vigilance, as each mark remains permanently exposed once made. It is within this condition that Jiang has worked for years, maintaining a contested relationship with a medium that is at once beloved and resisted, and working in close proximity to the inevitability of her own error.
Originally from Xinjiang in northwest China, Jiang first received Western academic training in drawing and oil painting at an early age. She later encountered ink on silk during her studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing, where it came to define her practice. Since relocating to London in 2023, she has brought ink on silk into dialogue with Western canonical imagery drawn from biblical and Greco-Roman mythological traditions. Paintings such as 'Eve and I' (2024), 'Sleeping Venus' (2025), and 'Susanna at Her Bath' (2025) revisit familiar art-historical compositions as a way of negotiating the relationship between her chosen medium and the history of Western painting.
In Post-Edenic, Jiang identifies a parallel between Eden—previously operating as a backdrop within her work—and Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage, long a recurring framework in her practice—as an axis of reflection through which she reflects on an intensely personal yet fundamentally human condition. The work engages with what has been lost, rendering the weight of that loss operative within the image.
