Shower Seoul

Dust, ever-present yet seldom seen, reveals how protection and neglect are unequally distributed within systems of labor. For Liste Art Fair 2026, Ruofan Chen turns her focus to the art world’s hidden ecologies, examining the chronic exposure of installers, fabricators, artists, and gallery workers to silica, pigments, adhesives, and other ambient toxins. Counterweight, developed with the studio Shampoo, centers on a suspended wooden volume supported by a dense column of compacted sawdust and studio debris; a granular archive of production. The central element, an oil painting on canvas, depicts a wooden board covered in dust (an accumulation that might occur in less than a single working day) rendered to appear as if it were the object itself. Embedded paintings made from oil and collected dust shift with light, making particulate matter alternately visible and stark. The work exposes the silent calculations of risk within cultural production, asking who is protected and who absorbs the slow accumulation of harm.

Ruofan Chen's practice engages slow, chronic forms of harm; invisible forces that quietly accumulate within bodies and environments, leading her to liken the Earth to a body. Her work begins with embodied perception: immediate sensory encounters where breath, skin, and nerves register environmental erosion. These lived experiences, breathing particulate-heavy air and handling industrial residue, initiate cyclical processes of material gathering and studio creation. Through this method, she visibly renders the gradual clogging of vital systems, making tangible what remains imperceptible until damage becomes irreversible.
Ruofan Chen received her BFA from School of Visual Arts and her MFA from Royal College of Arts. She has held solo exhibition at Shower, Seoul (2025); Bank, Shanghai (2024) and participated in group exhibition at various institutions including Tai Kwun, Hongkong (2026), The 15th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2025), Perrotin, Shanghai (2025) and more. Her work is included in the collection of Tanto Art Foundation, K11, X Museum, Longlati Foundation and more.