6.2. — 1.3.2026

Opening 5.2. 18:00-20:00

Myymälä2 proudly presents “Tightened Narratives — Post-Biological Archive”, the first exhibition in Finland by Yang Tian, a multimedia artist working between Beijing and Paris. Tightened Narratives — Post-Biological Archive investigates and presents in the exhibition space artworks which trace an entangled legacy that the pandemic left on bodies, institutions, and material culture. Yang uses diagnostic apparatus and laboratory paraphernalia —centrifuge tubes, antigen kits, ELISA strips—and reframes clinical detritus as archival agents: vessels that store both data and memory. With a highly studied visual strategy and a meticulously prepared installation, the exhibition explores how systems of control and care inscribe themselves on matter, and how organic processes (growth, decay, spore) interact with institutional forms. Through installation, sculpture, photography, and moving image, the exhibition asks: What happens when narratives are tightened—when truth exists as a suspended equilibrium, held in place yet always at risk of rupturing?

Tightened Narratives — Post-Biological Archive begins with a small yet structurally forceful gesture: the tightening of centrifuge tube lids onto the delicate edge of a newspaper. The newspaper—an archetype of public discourse—trembles between being held and being torn. Its fragile margin becomes the threshold on which truth is performed, filtered, and continually rewritten within systems of power created by the endless dissemination of the mass media apparatus.

The exhibition curator Ramiro Camelo distils the core vision of the exhibition by explaining that “Tightened Narratives captures a defining moment of our era. Rather than treating the COVID-19 experience as a closed chapter, Yang’s work acknowledges how its emotional and psychological impact and trauma continue to echo through collective memory. The exhibition stands as a reliable testament to that shared period, documenting its lasting imprint. One can say that Yang tries to alert us: humanity became aware that the concept of any viable future depends on our ability to respond together—demonstrating resilience, flexibility, and cooperative action in the face of crisis.”

Yang attempts to make evident that although the pandemic has ended, the forces of its hidden aftermath — surveillance, verification, bureaucratic language, and informational pressure — have intensified and persist as post-biological residues. They operate quietly, like muscle memories embedded within bodies and infrastructures and will influence society in the long term.

ARTIST BIO
Yang Tian (b. 1993, Beijing) is a multidisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture, and poetic writing. His practice investigates how systems of control, memory, and language manifest in physical form—through humble, clinical, or industrial materials such as centrifuge tubes, iron, wood, and brass. Often drawing from post-pandemic experiences and research into traditional metal techniques, his works quietly trace the fractures between power and identity, belief and constraint. Rooted in both conceptual clarity and material intimacy, his installations and forged pieces unfold at the intersection of fragility and resistance. He has exhibited in China, Japan, South Korea, France, Australia, Greece, the United Kingdom, among others.

His recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Ephemeral + Eternal = Existential — Rendering of Absence’, Absent Gallery, Guangzhou, China （2025) and ‘Apparatus of Memory’ LP Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2025) recent group exhibitions: ‘Little Treasures – Small-Scale Art from the Collection of Brian Wallace’, Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, China （2025); ‘Traces of Becoming: The Contemporary’, DOC. Park, Guangzhou, China （2025), “Ritan Impressions, Seven Pavilions of Ritan — A contemporary dialogue between history and modernity in one of Beijing’s most revered imperial altars’. Beijing, China （2025) and Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney, Australia (2025). Yang Tian lives and works between Paris, Beijing.

Instagram:@yangtian_art

Exhibition Curated by Ramiro Camelo