At the Violet Hour

About

The sun dips and the violet hour arrives — that hushed breath between day and night — two figures linger at the edge of light, facing home oppositionally. 西出阳关无故人| At the Violet Hour is a collaboration between Singaporean-Malaysian textile artist Xuan Yeo and Singaporean-Chinese performance artist Lu Lei, who together unravel what it means to say goodbye: to a friend, to a space, to a self, or to home(s).

Derived from a Tang dynasty poem by Wang Wei, 西出阳关无故人 (xī chū yáng guān wú gù rén) — “Once you pass west of Yangguan, no old friends remain” — this exhibition unfolds in silences and crossings, in the spaces where land splits, where bodies reach, where absence and belonging shadow each other. The Violet Hour is the liminal moment at dusk when day collapses softly into night. T.S. Eliot writes of it as the hour of hush, of tremble — the moment "when the eyes and back / Turn upward from the desk." In this exhibition, the Violet Hour calls beyond its time, towards a threshold: a moment suspended between return and release, where grief gathers like dusk and the past hums at its edges, lingering like twilight: quiet, melancholic, inevitable. Not a destination, but a departure; the moment just after the last embrace, just before the land gives way to distance. What emerges is not a conversation between two practices, but an entanglement. Lu embroidered her texts directly into Xuan’s handwoven cloth in 再见(zài jiàn) (2025), her words no longer only spoken or read, but stitched — quietly, irrevocably — into thread. Xuan responds through weaving Lu’s language into her textiles as evident in site-specific partnership (2025), explicating itself in the lines between warp and weft. In this way, textile and voice melt into an expression of intimacy.

Beyond the corporeal, there is a certain vulnerability of artistic surrender indicated through the entrusting of each others' personal languages and gestures into the other's hands. In doing so, they offer the viewer a way of witnessing the complexities of connection: how it unravels, how it holds, how it changes form in the act of departure.

To walk west of Yangguan is to leave with no promise of return. 西出阳关无故人|At the Violet Hour invites viewers to stand at the seam, to feel the weight of parting, and to trace the thin line between holding on and letting go. Yet in this violet hour, perhaps something endures — a strand, a trace, a shadow stitched into cloth.

If this exhibition is a farewell, it is one made with care. At the violet hour, the world quiets. In that quiet, this exhibition listens — to the partings we carry, the homes we long for, and the silences we share when words fall short. It is here, in this suspended hour, that we find not resolution, but resonance.

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Lu (b.1999) is a London-based Singaporean artist focusing on multi-faceted social and political issues, primarily in the context of Singapore. Her works are characterised by their straightforward and candid nature, aiming to create a space for audiences to reflect upon and share their own experiences, confront prejudice and discrimination, and confront societal challenges. Her research and artistic practice are deeply influenced by her personal experiences of navigating the tensions between nationalism and identity. She is particularly intrigued by the role and context of language, including accents and creoles, and how they intersect with other aspects of culture. Lu's artistic approach offers a unique perspective on societal matters, inviting audiences to engage with her work and encouraging critical reflection on the complexities of contemporary existence.

She graduated MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2023, and with a First Class (Hons) Fine Art at Goldsmiths University in 2022, United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions of her work include solo exhibition DisComfort Food at Fitzrovia Gallery, London, and Future Arts Festival: Remote Sensing Future Living 2025首届未来艺术节：遥感未来起居 at Gengdan Institute of Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China. She has also been invited to and contributed to panel discussions, such as Movement Beyond Limit(s) at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and have been featured in platforms including the FadMagazine, Peopleart , Sohu and various platforms.

Xuan (b. 2000) is a Singaporean-Malaysian textile artist, fabricator, and facilitator, based across London and Singapore. Her practice(s) are rooted in negation and emptiness, in order to activate meditative environments that underscore the extreme labour-intensiveness of their making. Through weaving, perfumery, installation, and textual manipulation, her work productively uses meditation and labour to see through processes in karmic cycles, memory, and spatio-temporal imaginations into being diaspora. Grounded in gnomonic systems of measurement, time, celestial divination and astronomy, based in ancient Vedic scripture, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Euclidean geometry, and Daoist logic, they are mutually formulaic and repetitive.

Prominent collaborations and exhibitions across London and Singapore include A.P.T. Gallery, Mimosa House, Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art, Constance Howard Gallery, Barbican Arts Group Trust, Starch, Kunst Affair, Freelands Foundation, Martina Larsson & Artists, Synonym Lab, ZII Gallery, and A Particular Reality. She is also codirector and founder for Silkworm Collective, who currently hold a residency at the Goldsmiths’ Centre of Contemporary Art and are in ongoing collaboration with Greenwich Royal Libraries, Teaspoon Projects, and John Stainer Primary.

She holds a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art and History of Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.