Nothing Stays Like It Was
August 17 to August 21, 2026
13 Grattan St, #402, Brooklyn, NY, 11206
Artists
Xiaoming Ai
Yitian Li
Riddock McCoy
Tommasino Maderna
Nathalie Slowak
Qintong Yu
A Space is proud to present Nothing Stays Like It Was, a group exhibition featuring works by Xiaoming Ai, Yitian Li, Riddock McCoy, Tommasino Maderna, Nathalie Slowak and Qintong Yu. The exhibition will be on view from August 17 to August 21, 2026.
Nothing Stays Like It Was reflects on the ways images, memories, bodies, beliefs, and inherited experiences change as they move through different contexts. Across video, drawing, illustration, and traditional painting, the works trace what is altered, preserved, distorted, or carried forward through processes of repetition and transformation. Familiar spaces become detached from time, found images are broken apart and recombined, cultural histories are passed between generations, digital systems reshape human behavior, while spiritual symbols are reinterpreted as tools for navigating fear, instability, and inner transformation.
In a moment when personal memory, cultural inheritance, technological environments, and systems of belief increasingly overlap, change is rarely singular or complete. The past does not simply disappear; it returns through fragments, gestures, images, patterns, and habits, taking on new forms each time it is encountered. At the same time, transformation does not necessarily imply the loss of stability. Within states of uncertainty, individuals continue to search for forms of inner order, awareness, and continuity that can persist even as the conditions around them shift. Nothing Stays Like It Was brings these different forms of change into the same space, considering how we continue to recognize ourselves and the world around us even as neither remains entirely the same.
