A perpetual stranger
Am I to the world
I don’t understand its language
My silence it can’t comprehend

——A Perpetual Stranger, Bei Dao

“Anonymous” is rendered in a complex layer of implications which can be semantically diverse according to its context. We are all the individuals narrating the history, while a drop in the ocean when confronted with the overwhelming historical panorama; without following the dictum, therein someone relentlessly opt for being the anonymous. This is enacted by seeking for a space of reclusion within the very uproar of the world.

Born in the 50s, Liu Renjie and Wang Yan witnessed the transitional period of society and the accelerated development of today. The joint background marked the trajectory of their works, where they both can be found as a more congenial subject for the independent personality and the distinct perspectives associated with idealism and humanism. Contemporary city is flourishing with a progressive developmental logic. Nevertheless, the two artists are introspectively and rigorously deploying the most vulnerable of the city as a central rhetoric: the subtle panting along with quivering of individual’s heart; the discordant soul and nostalgia under the spectacle of urbanization...Paralleling with the phantom of contemporary world, artists aspire to compose a poetry devoted to the anonymous.