蘭亭無序 Orchid Pavilion (ongoing project)

Orchid Pavilion (蘭亭無序) is an artistic and research project that takes the orchid not as a symbol of identity, but as a method for thinking, relating, and becoming. Rooted in contemporary mainland China, the project examines how bodies, intimacy, kinship, and social values are shaped, constrained, and reconfigured within specific cultural and historical conditions. Emerging from long-term inquiries into queer intimacy, alternative kinship, and more-than-human relations, Orchid Pavilion unfolds through writing, moving image, small-scale gatherings, and forms of public pedagogy.

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The name draws from Wang Xizhi’s Preface to the Orchid Pavilion (王羲之《蘭亭序》), evoking the historical pavilion as a temporary site of assembly, writing, and shared reflection. The addition of Wuxu (無序), meaning “without order,” signals a deliberate departure from fixed hierarchies, stable classifications, and normative social arrangements. Here, the orchid names a way of becoming beyond identity, marked by subtle difference, adaptability, and non-linear growth, while the pavilion functions as an in-between space for encounter, rest, and provisional togetherness.

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Rather than operating as a stable community or an alternative institution, Orchid Pavilion exists as a dispersed, situational practice. It is composed of temporary events, intimate gatherings, collective readings, moving-image screenings, workshops, and conversations, that take place across private and semi-public contexts. These moments respond to the limited and uneven conditions for queer expression in China, not by consolidating identity or visibility, but by cultivating relational modes of presence, attention, and care.

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Through the recurring proposition of “becoming orchid,” the project approaches transformation as an ethical and relational practice. It asks how normative identities, kinship structures, and anthropocentric assumptions might be loosened in everyday life, making space for forms of coexistence that are fragile, temporary, and unresolved. Orchid Pavilion thus operates not as a metaphorical refuge, but as a living inquiry into how life might be organized otherwise, without order, yet not without relation.