Indra Gallery, London

November 24 – 26, 2025

Pathos was an art collective exhibition presented by Spira9 Art from 24 to 26 November 2025 at Indra Gallery in London. The exhibition gathered dozens of artists from different cultural and creative backgrounds, including CHAO LIU, Aysha, Weixi Kuang, XinYue Ma, Sanga O, Koli Fen, Poppy Cauchi, Doğan Özdemir and many others. This large and diverse group opened up a wide field of emotional expression, offering many shades of intensity, softness, conflict and vulnerability.

The exhibition suggested that emotion is not meant to be fully understood but sensed. It escapes language and logic, yet it moves directly through the body. Entering the space felt like walking into a shifting emotional atmosphere that rose and fell as the viewer moved through it.

Because the artists came from many mediums and cultures, the show became a multi-layered experience. Each piece carried its own emotional tone, and together they formed a landscape where different energies coexisted. Some works felt sharp and urgent, while others were quiet and fragile. The transitions between them were not smooth, but this unevenness created a sense of honesty that reflected how human emotion often behaves.

Visitors reacted in deeply personal ways:

Aisha N.（UK · Writer）
“Protect Me made me unexpectedly emotional. It felt like the object was holding a quiet fear inside it. I don’t know what it wanted protection from, but I felt the urge to protect it anyway. It reminded me of the kind of softness people hide.”

Gabriel K.（Spain · Photographer）
“The colours felt like two emotions drifting through each other. It was calm and unsettling at the same time, almost like remembering a dream just as it starts to fade.”

Emma R. (UK · Art Critic)
“I didn’t try to understand everything. Pathos just shifted something inside me. I walked out feeling both lighter and heavier, as if an old emotion had quietly resurfaced.”

Sofia M. (Italy · Visual Artist) on Bactereature
“The piece felt strangely alive. It made me think about the unseen parts of our bodies and how much of our lives depend on things we never notice.”

Julian S. (Canada · Art Student) on Echo of Echo
“Walking around the installation felt like moving inside a fading memory. The repeated face made me think about how forgetting someone can happen slowly, without realising.”

Mei-Lin Z. (China · Visitor) on Blossom
“The colours felt like they grew naturally rather than being painted. It was calming, like watching a small garden form in front of me.”

Omar L. (Lebanon · Architect) on Standing Giddy Happy
“It looked like a pillar that no longer wanted to stand straight. Something between collapse and humour. It made me think about how even structures can carry emotional tension.”

For a team committed to cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary exhibitions, this openness marks an important direction. Pathos shows how an exhibition can connect artists and audiences without relying on heavy narratives or academic framing. Instead of persuading viewers through explanation, it invites them to enter through their senses and find their own emotional response. At the same time, such openness comes with challenges. Maintaining flow between different works, making the experience accessible and creating space for multiple voices without losing clarity are all ongoing tasks for curators, designers and organisers

Invited Artists:

Ai Deng | Anna Gudnicheva | Ash Alldread | Aylin Taslak | Aysha | Caitlin Deiter | CHAO LIU | Cheng Xie | Chenjie Li | Chenlu Shao | Claudia Ungersbäck | Di Cao | Doğan Özdemir | Elen Alien | Elena Shcherbina | elisELIS prostoTak | FINA FERRARA | Grazyna Parker | Hanna Liubinskaya | Herin Kim | Huilin Li | Jes Chen & Tacy Zhao & Eimyn Cheung & Chadzing Kung | Joseph Baron-Pravda | Kateryna Proseniuk | Kenneth Henckel | Koli Fen | Laurel Leng | Leya Rubin | LMarty | Luca Dayanc and Katrina Dayanc | Marina Priyomova | Marta Pieregonczuk | Marzieh Dickson | Poppy Cauchi | Ravi Modi | Sanga O | Shavonne (Xuehui) Yang | SODABOY (Hao Ming) | Tracy McBride | Weixi Kuang & Junpeng Liang | Yanyan Zhao | Yang Yang | Xiaoxiao Chen | Xiaoyi Sun | XinYue Ma & Alexander Collinson | İurii Aleksandrov

Curator: Qi Hui

Creative Director: Teng Xue

Exhibitions Coordinator：Sophie Caldwel

Exhibition Designer: Daniel Foster, Kaycee Qu

Technical Producer: James O’Connor

About SPIRA9 ART

SPIRA9 is an East London–based curatorial platform and art organisation dedicated to supporting established, emerging, and under-represented artists across disciplines. Through exhibitions, editorial projects, and artist development programmes, we build meaningful pathways for visibility, collaboration, and critical dialogue.

Our work encompasses large-scale group exhibitions, intimate solo presentations, and experimental pop-ups, as well as our quarterly publication Re: Art magazine and the ongoing Artist of the Month series. Across these formats—whether practical, research-led, or boldly experimental—we seek to create spaces that highlight distinctive voices at pivotal moments in their practice. Engaging with multimedia, performance, installation, and digital forms, SPIRA9 champions approaches that push against convention and expand the possibilities of contemporary artistic expression.

Since 2024, SPIRA9 has produced more than 10 exhibitions internationally, supported over 2000 artists, and reached audiences across 14 countries through our programming and editorial initiatives.Guided by an artist-centred ethos, we prioritise intersectional perspectives, inclusive frameworks, and sustained engagement with the cultural and technological conditions shaping creative production today. Our mission is to cultivate a contemporary art landscape that is accessible, equitable, and forward-looking—one that supports artists in imagining new ways of seeing, thinking, and being.

Upcoming Opportunity

My Body is Dust – Asylum Chapel (February 2026)

My Body is Dust – Asylum Chapel is the second exhibition in SPIRA9’s nomadic Othering series, following the first chapter, Everything Then is Now – Alter Peckham, presented during London Design Festival. The series explores the interplay between memory, space, and becoming, with each site-responsive exhibition reimagining architecture and context as living, dynamic bodies.

This next chapter will take place within the historic Grade II–listed Asylum Chapel, reinterpreting the space as a site where decay and regeneration coexist. We invite works that explore material transformation, memory, energy, ecological cycles, organic processes, or virtual/generative life.

Proposals are welcome from artists, designers, architects, performers, and interdisciplinary practitioners. All media are eligible, including installation, sound, moving image, performance, generative/AI work, text, and spatial research.

First-round submission deadline: 7 January 2026 (23:59 BST)

Submit your proposal: https://forms.gle/HZ8pcaSBNjg7j9i67
Inquiries: info@spira9.art Instagram: @spira9art

Text by Aaliyah C. & Olivia Shuay