一夜邂逅 Nightly Encounter

瑞士艺术家高嫣（Rebekka Steiger，1993年生于瑞士苏黎世）的个展“一夜邂逅”，展览将呈现高嫣在近年来以及目前在北京驻留期间创作的一系列近作。通过融合多元文化母题以及对多种材料的实验性运用，艺术家构建了一种独特的视觉语言，展开了层次丰富的叙事，并藉此反思人与自然之间错综复杂的相互作用。

The solo exhibition Nightly Encounter by Swiss artist Rebekka Steiger (b. 1993, Zurich, Switzerland) presents a series of works created during her recent and ongoing residencies in Beijing. Through the integration of diverse cultural motifs and experimental materials, the artist constructs a distinctive visual language that unfolds layered narratives, reflecting on the complex interplay between nature and humanity.

作为画家与故事讲述者，高嫣着迷于象征意义丰富的意象——它们往往蕴含着广泛的文化内涵。她的创作将这些意象转化为故事的起点，让观众得以窥见横跨欧亚的历史、古典神话与民间传说。在作品《一夜邂逅 II》中，她将狐狸与东亚神话中的传统形象九尾狐联系起来，令人联想到鸟羽天皇的宫廷侍女玉藻前，以及中国商朝末代君王的著名妃子妲己。在传统叙事中，这些女性被赋予超自然力量，扮演着诱惑君王的“狐狸精”角色，并最终被揭露为邪恶的化身——这也呼应了近代欧洲的猎巫史。无数女性所经历的迫害，表面上是宗教迷信与王权制度的歇斯底里，实则根植于公众对偏离规范者的集体恐惧。此外，狐狸作为一种生灵，亦指向自然本身。通过将神话故事和边缘化群体历史关联，高嫣审视了结构化的人类世界与不可抗拒的自然力量之间的张力。

As both a painter and a storyteller, Steiger is obsessed with symbolically charged imagery that encompasses a wide spectrum of cultural implications. Her practice allows viewers to glimpse histories, classical mythology, and folklore spanning Europe and Asia, which she transforms into inspiration for her stories. For example, in her work 一夜邂逅 II, she links the fox to the East Asian fox spirit—a seductive, supernatural figure embodied by characters such as Tamamo no Mae from the court of Emperor Toba and Daji, consort of the last ruler of the Shang dynasty. Traditionally unmasked as fox spirits, these mythological figures resonate with the witch hunts of early modern Europe, when countless women were persecuted amid widespread superstition and fear of marginalized individuals from the social and imperial systems. Meanwhile, the fox, as an animal, is also associated with nature. By linking the fox to both mythological figures and the histories of marginalised groups, Steiger examines the tension between the structured human world and the inexorable forces of nature.

骑士与花朵的意象则进一步凸显了这种主题张力。骑士对高嫣来说是堂吉诃德和成吉思汗等历史和文学人物与艺术家个人表达的融合。由于频繁出现在古代世界的战争中，这一形象往往与征服、暴力和混乱联系在一起；而花朵通常象征着脆弱与潜在的威胁。在《verheddert》中，一名骑士手握利剑，似乎正冲向缠绕的花朵，要在花丛中开辟出一条道路；而从观者视角看，前景中的花朵仿佛化为捕猎者，伺机围剿后方的“猎物”。三头马和面容模糊的骑士加剧了画面的戏剧性。骑士与花朵，捕食者与猎物，征服与脆弱——这些相互矛盾而又彼此转化的意象在高嫣的画作中象征性地展示了人与自然世界之间的交织和对抗。高嫣并不局限于复述传统，而是汲取不同文化中的形象，编织属于自己的故事。

This thematic tension is further reinforced in her imagery of the rider and the flower. The rider is an amalgamation of historical and literary figures like Don Quixote and Genghis Khan, as well as a representation of the artist’s personal expression. Traditionally they are associated with conquest, violence and chaos, as they frequently appear in the wars of the ancient world, while flowers usually symbolized fragility and latent threat. In verheddert, a rider in the background is rushing towards intertwined flowers, sword in hand, to clear a path through the floral mass. However, from the audience’s perspective, the flowers in the foreground transform into a predatory creature, poised to capture the prey at the back. The dynamically rendered horse with three heads and the obscured face of the rider heighten the sense of movement and ambiguity. The rider and the flower, the predator and the prey, conquest and fragility—these pairs of contradicting yet reciprocal images in Steiger’s painting emblemize the intertwined yet conflicted relationship between humanity and the natural world. Rendered in similar colours and brushstrokes, the two images fuse into a single visual entity, dissolving the boundary between humanity and nature. Steiger does not confine herself to retelling traditional tales, but instead creates protean figures that originate from different cultures to illustrate her own stories.

在亚洲的游历也深刻影响了艺术家的材料选择和主题探索。她坦言，“中国带给我和瑞士截然不同的感受。这里总是有一种足够奇异和足够开放的感觉”。《腾格里》便源于她去年在内蒙古腾格里沙漠的旅行。凭借其独特的技法和叙事，高嫣将沙漠转化为一片超越现实世界的梦幻之境。通过层次丰富的意象与层叠的叙事，高嫣的个展试图挑战固化的解读，动摇人与自然世界之间传统的二元对立，她的作品揭示出：自然是一个不断流变的建构，它包容——而非对峙——人类的存在。

Steiger’s travel experiences through Asian countries have profoundly influenced her material choices and thematic explorations. “I would say that the Chinese mindset here is quite inspiring. Generally speaking, I have certain feelings here that are very different from those in Switzerland. There’s always a strange enough and open feeling,” she notes. 腾格里

draws inspiration from her trip to the Tengger Desert in Inner Mongolia last year. With her unique techniques and compositions, Steiger transforms the desert into a dreamlike realm that transcends the real world. Through her layered imagery and diverse conceptual approaches, in Nightly Encounter, Steiger challenges fixed interpretations and destabilises the conventional binary between humanity and the natural world. She reveals that, nature is an ever-shifting construct that encompasses, rather than opposes, human existence.