Fantasies and Foreclosure

Blouin Division invites the emerging visual artist Miao Xuan Liu to present her first solo exhibition Fantasies and Foreclosure at Project Space. The installation explores how capitalism and social structures shape desire, impacting the body and its perceptions. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s theory of Cruel Optimism, it examines the “double bind”—where conflicting promises leave no solution—manifesting in exhaustion, migration, and unfulfilled aspirations.

Referencing figurative sculpture and artists like Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgeois, the exhibition addresses the contemporary figure caught between labor, migration, and consumerism. Central to Fantasies and Foreclosure is a Taoist world view which problematizes the Cartesian mind-body divide, a Western construction that divorces a subject from its sensory potentials and is instrumental to the subjugation of vast populations.

Materials such as Hei Mu Er mushrooms, found objects, wax, and tights subvert traditional sculpture to reflect the porous boundaries between the self, desires, and experience. Ultimately, the exhibition asks how subjects reconcile their dreams amid contradictions and unattainable ideals.

Miao Xuan Liu is a Toronto based artist interested in the movement of poetry, power, trauma, and affect through bodies and environments. Project Space is a Blouin Division initiative to support emerging artists. The space provides a showcase for artists not represented by the gallery.