For this edition of the Photoworks’ New Year Commission, selected artist Ning Cheng created an image as part of her project, It’s Raining in the Room. Ning shares:
“For this commission, I continued my ongoing project It’s Raining in the Room, using teeth as a thread to explore everyday experience, objects, and the body. For me, the new year is not a clear beginning or ending, but a slow process of carrying everything that has already happened into the future, a state that is unfolding.
Losing teeth is a common bodily experience that marks a shift from one stage to another. It symbolizes disappearance, but also signifies something new is growing in the same place. The body follows its own cycles, which are beyond the standard calendar. In the image, teeth point to a time remembered by the body and difficult to divide or mark.
Rain appears in the image as traces. I use resin to create raindrop textures on aluminum, suggesting the slow passage of weather. These are placed with two printed images of domestic still life. The boundaries between inside and outside overlap, as if flowing towards an unknown place.
When teeth fall out, we grow. After rain, the weather shifts. Life is not always defined by dramatic or intense events, but by these small, ordinary transitions that shape us over time. Rather than focusing on the celebration of the new year, this image intends to capture unnamed moments that are still forming, holding a quiet hope for change. It stays in-between, where we find ourselves not completely departed, not truly arrived.”
Ning Cheng, born in 2000, graduated from the Royal College of Art, is currently based between Ningbo and London. She is an image-based artist working with photography and sculpture. Her practice is rooted in the exploration of personal perception and aims to abstract and transform overlooked, specific feelings of life and expand them into a universal experience.
Visit Ning’s website here.
Keep an eye out for her Instagram Takeover here.
Explore previous New Year Commissions here.
