A Waking Dream

Curatorial essay by Echo Yu He

April 2026

Dreams bridge both worlds—the visible and the invisible, the conscious and the unconscious, the inner and the outer. If the nocturnal world is the realm of the unconscious mind as described by Carl Jung, then dreams act as a nocturnal theater of symbols where our souls quietly open the hidden door to the cosmic night. In dreams, we play and practice the theater of life that reenacts itself again and again, until comedy and tragedy, drama and opera, all mix together and become a ripple of light. The mind travels in the darkness, crossing ripples stirred by karma, until Alaya-vijnana wakes up in the amniotic fluid of evening and sails toward paramita in paper boats.

There could not be a better way to describe the arising thoughts behind this exhibition than with the words of Jung: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” It is a vital reminder that true self-awareness comes from introspection rather than external material pursuits—especially in a current era full of uncertainties and constant distractions, where situationships, FOMO, and ghosting have become the unspoken new norms. Dreams use symbolic images as the language of the unconscious mind to process emotions and memories, allowing for communication between the conscious ego and the deeper self. In a way, the artists’ creations are not unlike daydreams. These visual presentations communicate with unseen worlds through symbolic images related to the archetypes of the collective unconscious. In this exhibition, we have invited three artists—Wendy Letven, Davina Hsu, and Sascha Mallon—who work with a variety of media including paint, natural wool, clay, aluminum, paper, crochet, wood, and poetry to create a Gesamtkunstwerk: a unified creative environment where architecture, design, and interior merge into a single cohesive whole. This holistic approach encourages the audience to weave the “knots” together with the artists and discover the connection between the fractured ego and the wholeness of the cosmic circle.”

Sascha Mallon’s artistic practice was informed by narratives and imagery rooted in her early exposure to European fairy tales, particularly stories by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, as well as her experience as a Hospital Artist-in-Residence with The Creative Center at Mount Sinai. For this exhibition, she presents a new work Consequences of a Broken Sky - an immersive, site-specific installation that blends wall drawings  with intricate hand-built ceramics, crochet and sculptural elements. Drawing from a lingering poem that continues to adapt into an evolving constellation of blossoms, Sascha Mallon offers a profound meditation on the resilience of life and the “imperfect” beauty of being alive. At the heart of the narrative, a rosebush emerges from the tiger’s spine—a symbol of life born from the center of trauma—which then transforms into a gateway of cherry blossoms. Through the artists-made poem cards, the audience is encouraged to see the gallery space as an alchemical lab, performing small acts of care that lead into an experience of individual and collective healing and renewal.

Wendy Letven explores a personal language of abstraction that universally implies the mechanism of space and time and the fabric of the universe. Many of her works are created from her abstract interpretations of landscapes and natural phenomena, such as motion, resonance, rhythm and harmony. Her recent body of works explore the “sensation of dreaming” through installations that dissolve the boundaries between the internal psyche and the exterior world. By translating the fluid energy of a “flow state” into intricate paintings, works on paper and laser-cut sculptures, she maps a surreal landscape where cosmic rhythm and microscopic realms converge. The artist draws inspiration from Jean Arp’s sculptural work and the visionary paintings of Agnes Pelton. Her use of symbolic geometry - lines, circles, lunar cycles, and lyrical lines - acts as the “warp and weft of the universe,” turning rigid materials into a fluid continuum of light and shadow that mirrors the shifting and ephemeral nature of subconscious thinking.

Extending the inquiry into the vastness of the cosmic realm, Davina Hsu’s work functions as a series of anchors and portals for cosmic consciousness and mysticism. For Hsu, the boundary between dreaming and waking is a fluid intersection where altered states and direct insights become "downloads" from the superconscious. Her felted sculptures, such as Clairvoyant and Galactic Guardian, act as encoded symbols made manifest. Clairvoyant emerges as techno-mystical frequencies that activate the pineal gland and open the soul to hyperdimensional realms, while Galactic Guardian as a multidimensional angelic presence that awakens the remembrance of collective higher purpose. By translating these celestial transmissions into the tangible warmth of wool and gold-leafed resin clay, Hsu invites us to raise awareness of multiple layers of consciousness. In this state, we are no longer merely spectators of our own lives, but active witnesses to a "conscious upgrading" unfolding within the collective field. As the artist states: “Awareness expands beyond ordinary perception, attuning to hyperdimensional realms and awakening an extraterrestrial DMT god consciousness from within.”

Complementing the visual environment of the exhibition, the public programming offers a multidimensional exploration of the psyche through theory, ritual, and craft. In collaboration with Civil Art, a panel discussion will delve into the research foundations of the exhibition, followed by a ceramic glazing workshop led by artist Sascha Mallon, inviting participants to explore the dreams by adorning hand-crafted porcelain birds with their own personal mythologies and secret inscriptions. Meanwhile, writer and herbalist Robin Rose Bennett will lead a healing with herbalism workshop designed to develop an herbal infusion recipe that assists with meditation, dream, and intuition.

We invite you to inhabit these visions of artists and creators from different disciplines as a bridge cast across the Great Sea, where the fragile ripples of our individual dreams are reclaimed by the profound, luminous depths of the collective subconscious. In this sanctuary of shifting forms, the boundary between the dreamer and the dream dissolves, leaving only a living dialogue—a quiet resonance where the solitary soul meets the eternal, ancestral echoes of our collective subconscious.