“If a work momentarily unsettles the viewer, introduces hesitation, or prompts deeper reflection whilst evoking an emotion, it has already fulfilled its role.”

Building algorithmic gardens where empathy as a modern theory is pushed beyond its limits, the practice of Guo Cheng through architectural illustration, post-photographic media, wearable installations, and spatial storytelling investigates how bodies and cultural meanings are “constructed, disrupted, and reconfigured”. Visually, the artist's research exists between cultural translation and spatial phenomenology, with digital renderings of digitally mediated cities and wearable structures designed not to defend the body, but to augment its space. These works construct what might be called a poetics of misalignment, acting as diagnostic tools for cultural failure. 

On a conceptual level, one might think of Do Ho Suh’s fabric architectures, sculptural investigations that integrate displacement and cultural memory stripped of nostalgia, or Zaha Hadid’s parametric designs. However, in Cheng’s practice the conversation with computational aesthetics is deliberately broken. Algorithmic gardens function as a critical apparatus that exposes the inherent errors in digital translations. The work rather fits within traditional Chinese spatial philosophy, centering on flow and layered perception, yet emphasizing negative obstruction and friction points in the foreground where translation fails to reach. If you look closely, the work does not reconcile East and West; it preserves and heightens their incompatibility as a structural condition.

In the performance Someone Else’s Shoes, bodies swap footwear to illustrate a core message: empathy is almost impossible to achieve. In this work, the artist wanted to express the irony behind the expression 'wearing someone else’s shoes’; as your body cannot truly understand others' struggles, or fit in its mold, as it has never crossed the same barriers as they have. During the performance, a red circle is painted, but not as a portal, but as a wound. Symbolizing that empathy isn't bridge-building; it is a collision, there is a moment when you need to admit its limits. Cheng’s methodical visual and conceptual refusal of synthesis and the insistence on preserving friction as a structural condition between Eastern and Western spatial paradigms positions her practice alongside Haegue Yang’s industrial fabrication and folk craftsmanship or Theaster Gates Japanese ceramics, guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism and Animism. Similarly, Cheng negates cultural differences without collapsing into the "facile multiculturalism" of essentialist binaries.

Another aspect of the artist's multimedia practice is the wearable installations that invoke the body as architecture. By focusing on empathy’s negative limits and structural impossibilities, the work offers a corrective to the liberal humanism often underpinning relational aesthetics. Cheng’s overall narratives and installations are not escape routes, but diagnostic tools revealing how centuries of essentialist logic became encoded and distorted within digital systems.

Furthermore, Cheng’s dual role as artist and cultural mediator brings forth another layer of research. While these roles are claimed to be mutually reinforcing, one wonders whether the pedagogical demands of cultural translation risk domesticating the very uncertainties the artistic work seeks to preserve.

What pivotal moments or experiences led you to become the interdisciplinary visual artist you are today?

My early artistic training began in high school, where my practice remained largely within 2D drawings and lacked a clearly defined research direction. During my undergrad, I shifted towards exhibition and spatial design, spending three years working with spatial structures and narrative frameworks. A decisive turning point occurred during my studies at the Royal College of Art, where concepts were prioritised over formal outcomes. This environment led me to understand media not as an end, but as a tool. At the same time, my sustained research across multiple cultural contexts sharpened my awareness of misalignments within space and the body - an awareness that has since become central to my interdisciplinary practice.

One of the areas of focus in your extensive research-based visual practice is Chinese spatial philosophy, which you reimagine through speculative architectural illustrations and digital cityscapes. What motivated you to pursue this line of inquiry both visually and conceptually?

Chinese spatial philosophy does not prioritise unification or collective memory, but instead emphasises relationships, fluidity, and layered perception. These spatial logics have long existed within classical gardens and urban experience, yet they are increasingly compressed or overlooked in contemporary digital cities. My research visits to traditional southern Chinese gardens, such as the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Suzhou, revealed spaces designed not primarily for viewing, but for sensing, such as, listening to rain, observing wind, and healing the body over time. Rather than attempting to revive traditional forms, I aim to reposition these spatial philosophies within contemporary forms of digital modelling , examining how they are translated, disrupted, or reconfigured.

In your statement, you mentioned that your work creates “algorithmic gardens”. Can you guide us through what this means?

“Algorithmic gardens” do not romanticise nature, but instead describe spatial conditions generated and constrained by systems of rules. While these environments appear organic and fluid, they are continuously bound by invisible laws resulting from centuries of ancestral history. In my practice, such spaces draw upon the non-linear pathways of Chinese gardens while simultaneously exposing the order and control. My attempts to introduce Chinese garden philosophy into various digital processes revealed the difficulty of encoding the poetic atmosphere, scholarly sensibility, and embodied perception. As such, algorithmic gardens also function as metaphors for failed translation, revealing the fractures and imbalance that occur when cultural knowledge enters into the digital world.

Your practice spans architectural illustration, post-photographic media, wearable installations, and spatial storytelling—each exploring moments when perception becomes unstable. How do you weave connections between these diverse mediums, and in what ways do you feel each technique shapes or transforms the audience’s experience?

I do not approach media as stylistic choices, but as different levels of intervention. Architectural illustration addresses structure, scale, and systemic relationships; post-photographic media interrogates the dissonance between image and reality; wearable installations directly incorporate the body into spatial structures. These media do not exist in parallel, but shift and overlap through the viewer’s experience. My interest lies in how subjectivity is continuously reconfigured when their perception becomes unstable across these mediums.

What can you tell us about the project "In Someone Else’s Shoes"? What are the core lines of inquiry?

‘In Someone Else’s Shoes’ presents the reverse of an idealised narrative of empathy, examining its negative limits. The project originated from a proverbial translation, transforming ‘taking one’s perspective’ into ‘wearing someone else’s shoes’; a metaphor that immediately reveals a lack of the full understanding, when even physically wearing someone else’s shoes, one cannot fully be the owner of them. When the body enters a structure not designed for it, discomfort, friction, and imbalance persist. Rather than leading to complete empathy and understanding, this experience constantly reminds us of the differences and incompatibilities between culture, gender, and identity.

You have a fascinating take on empathy and its different layers. How do you illustrate “the intricate dynamics of human connection”?

I am more interested in articulating the tensions within relationships than in presenting their resolution. Obstruction, overlap, and disconnect reoccur throughout my work, not as ornamental concepts, but as structural conditions of connection itself. Human relationships are often marked by delay, misinterpretation, and absence, and I seek to preserve these uncertainties rather than brush them away.

Your wearable installations function as mobile architectures attached to the body, examining the paradox of visibility. Can you tell us more about this?

These wearable structures do not protect the body; instead, they amplify its presence. The piece of architecture becomes one with the body, resulting in us turning into a piece of architecture, and likewise, the reversibility of the architecture becoming one with the body. Once architecture is attached to the body, the individual becomes both more visible and more exposed.  These conditions reveals a contemporary paradox in which visibility is inseparable from regulation and definition. For me, wearable installations function as experimental architectures that interrogate bodily boundaries, regimes of visibility, and spatial power.

How do you see your dual roles—as artist and cultural mediator—deepening the conceptual foundation of your practice?

Ultimately, my practice moves toward a space where artistic production and cultural mediation are no longer separate functions, but mutually reinforcing processes. Rather than treating culture as content and art as its illustration, I understand both as active systems that shape how meaning is formed, transmitted, and transformed. My work seeks to operate within this intersection, using artistic language to reveal cultural structures, and cultural sensitivity to destabilise fixed artistic perspectives. In this sense, development is not linear nor goal-driven, but accumulative: each project becomes a site where artistically conceptual decisions and cultural negotiations evolve together, allowing the practice to remain responsive, open, and critically grounded over time.

Art and artists play various roles in the fabric of contemporary society. How do you see artistic practices advancing sustainability and social consciousness?

I see art as a potential method for addressing social and environmental problems through practice. In sustainability, artists can intervene directly by working with reclaimed materials or waste products, reducing resource consumption while questioning established values of production and disposal.

Art also advances social consciousness by translating abstract issues, such as responsibility, labour, and environmental impact, into spatial or textural experiences. When people can physically encounter these issues, awareness becomes applicable rather than theoretical. In this sense, art offers concrete models and small-scale solutions that can influence broader beliefs and methods over time.

What message or call to action would you like to share with our readers?

I do not seek comfort. If a work momentarily unsettles the viewer, introduces hesitation, or prompts deeper reflection whilst evoking an emotion, it has already fulfilled its role. In an era that prioritises clarity and efficiency, the deliberate pause and preservation of uncertainty and sustained reflection becomes scarcer but more necessary.

Know more about the artist here.

Cover image

Face Index: 12 Units by Guo Cheng.

Images courtesy of Guo Cheng.