Not for – Jingyi Yu and Qi Ling’s new exhibition at A Space Gallery opens May 24, building from the emotional pressure explored in “New Year, New [Me]ntal Issues” and turning a sharper lens on what survives when art stops trying to justify itself through visibility, sal
On May 24, A Space Gallery will open a new exhibition curated by Jingyi Yu and Qi Ling. The title is simple enough to feel like a boundary: Not for Sale.
It also sounds like a refusal in an era when creative work is constantly asked to perform. Can it be exhibited?. Posted?. Sold?. Turned into visibility?. And if artists make something private. strange. unfinished. or too emotionally exposed to package neatly for the public. what happens to that work then?. The show begins with that question—and keeps it close.
Earlier this year. Yu served as the sole juror for New Year. New [Me]ntal Issues. a group exhibition at A Space Gallery that closed in late February. It looked at the emotional weight surrounding contemporary creative life, stepping away from the new year as a clean reset. Instead. it stayed with the pressure artists know well: deadlines returning. financial stress lingering. and creative exhaustion refusing to vanish just because the calendar changes.
Not for Sale comes with a clear shift in emphasis. While the earlier show leaned into emotional exhaustion and burnout, this one looks more directly at the conditions around contemporary creative life—especially the demand to produce, stay visible, and turn artistic practice into something useful.
The exhibition is built around an international open call that received nearly one hundred submissions from artists across the United States. China. Korea. and Europe. The curatorial statement frames the project around “the work that simply saved you”—pieces made privately. impulsively. emotionally. or without any expectation of audience at all.
Those details matter because Not for Sale doesn’t aim for an exhibition that reads like polished achievement. Instead, it gathers work created outside strategic intention or commercial ambition. Artists from multiple disciplines appear in the lineup, including London-based artist and animator Marian Obando.
Obando is a graduate of the MA Character Animation program at Central Saint Martins. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues and festivals including Mall Galleries in London. Animafest Zagreb. Animation Block Party in New York. and the Holland Animation Film Festival. Her recognitions include the 2026 Aesthetica Art Prize Longlist and Jackson’s Art Prize Longlist.
In this show, though, the spotlight isn’t on credentialed coherence. Yu and Ling shape the exhibition around emotional residue: unfinished sketches. abandoned experiments. strange visual fragments. deeply personal gestures. and works considered “too weird. ” “too unresolved. ” or “too personal” for public circulation. Rather than treating those qualities as weaknesses. the curators position them as evidence of something harder to preserve—honesty without performance.
Not for Sale also avoids the kind of anti-commercial aesthetic posture that can turn resistance into its own script. Its resistance feels quieter. The exhibition seems less interested in rejecting the art world altogether than protecting fragile ways of making from being absorbed by it.
There’s a broader cultural squeeze behind that quietness. In recent years. conversations around burnout and creative exhaustion have become increasingly visible. especially among younger artists navigating precarious economies and constant digital exposure. Yet those conversations often get absorbed back into content—another form of self-presentation. Not for Sale appears to recognize that trap. Instead of turning vulnerability into spectacle, it leaves uncertainty and contradiction unresolved.
That matters for artists whose bodies of work never reach public view because they don’t function neatly inside institutional or commercial structures. In the space the exhibition creates. works that feel directionless or impossible to explain are allowed to remain what they are. So is the unease of emotional exposure—something many artists manage by keeping certain work private.
Across both exhibitions. Yu’s curatorial approach stays close to the emotional realities of contemporary creative life. especially the quiet exhaustion that comes from constantly needing to continue producing. At a time when contemporary art increasingly overlaps with branding culture and self-performance. Not for Sale offers something slower and harder to quantify.
The title lands less like a slogan than a form of protection—an attempt to keep art from being forced to justify itself, and to keep certain kinds of making from being converted into evidence of success.
MISRYOUM Culture News Jingyi Yu Qi Ling A Space Gallery Not for Sale New Year New [Me]ntal Issues contemporary art open call Marian Obando Central Saint Martins burnout creative exhaustion