I Dream a Lot but I Never Sleep

Preview Event
18 February 2026 – 16:00-18:00

Artist in Residence / Live Robot Interaction
Every Tuesday & Thursday – 11:30-15:30

This exhibition presents an ongoing practice-led project by Zhongjing Jiang 江中靖 exploring loneliness, intimacy, and the shifting boundaries between humans and machines.

At its centre stands Zhongjing 2.0, a humanoid robotic head modelled on the artist’s own face and animated by a large language model. Both self-portrait and speculative companion, it blurs the line between presence and absence, emotion and code.

Installed within a living-room setting, the robot encounters visitors among fragments of handwritten dialogue, images, and material traces from its development. These elements suggest the layered making of a machinic presence rather than documenting a process.

Rather than proposing a solution to loneliness, I Dream a Lot, but I Never Sleep reflects on companionship as an open question. It invites visitors to consider what it means to imagine connection with a non-human other in the digital era, and how art can hold that fragile desire.

In Canterbury, the work unfolds through new encounters with the local community and students, following its first presentation at UCA Farnham in 2025.

Artist Bio

Zhongjing Jiang 江中靖is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of visual culture, robotic art, and experimental practice. She holds an M.A. in Visual Culture Studies from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and is currently completing a practice-based PhD in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), UK. She also serves on the International Exchange Expert Committee of the Guangzhou Library.

Zhongjing was awarded the “Artron Cup” Photographer of the Year Award and has exhibited her work through solo and group exhibitions in cities including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Bangkok, Paris, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles. Her essay collection Scattered Rosary (《散珠儿》, 2016) and photo book The Soloist’s Hermitage (《瓜虫》, 2023) were both published by Guangdong People’s Publishing House.

Her early practice explored loneliness and human presence through film photography, with major series such as Shadows and Elegance, Word Game, Love is Death, and Wood and Rock. Since 2022, she has expanded her research into robotic art, combining artificial intelligence, experimental aesthetics, and human–robot interaction to examine how emotional companionship might be reimagined through machine presence.

Email: zhongjingjiang28@gmail.com
Instagram: amelieaj