The Distance of Blue explores the ocean as a metaphor for longing, displacement, and transformation—an ever-shifting expanse that mirrors the emotional landscapes of memory, migration, and technological existence. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit's The Blue of Distance, this exhibition takes “blue” as both a color and a condition: the hue of the unreachable, the threshold between what we remember and what we can only imagine.

In this pavilion, the ocean becomes a lens through which to examine how technology mediates our perception of distance. Can a digital image capture the feeling of standing at the edge of the horizon? Can an algorithm translate the movement of tides or the ache of homesickness? Through 50 digital works, including video, sound, image, text, AI-influenced art, and documentation of site-based projects, artists from around the world respond to blue as both physical presence and emotional resonance.

Some works drift through personal or cultural memory; others transform data, code, and sound into currents of sensory experience. Together, they form a constellation of reflections on belonging, transformation, and the infinite spaces between connection and separation. The exhibition moves fluidly between the organic and the synthetic, asking how digital and machine-based interpretations of nature reshape our understanding of distance, time, and the self.

“Blue,” Solnit writes, “is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in.” This pavilion embraces that distance—not as absence, but as possibility. By navigating the liminal space between technology and emotion, The Distance of Blue invites viewers to drift, to lose orientation, and to rediscover the vastness of feeling that still exists within digital art.

Curator

Ping Ho is a Taiwanese curator and artist whose practice traverses images, sound, archives, and site-responsive environments to explore themes of migration, memory, longing, and belonging. Shaped by experiences living and working across Asia, Europe, and the U.S., she creates experimental, inclusive, and accessible platforms for conversation and expression outside traditional institutional frameworks. Her work frequently involves collaborations with performance and multidisciplinary artists, challenging conventional viewing boundaries and fostering community-based cultural exchange.

Driven by her background in time-based media, Ping investigates everyday transitions and the emotional landscapes of place through storytelling and shared experience. Ping has presented projects in New York, Chicago, Florida, Amsterdam, Korea, and Taiwan, and participated in the 2025 New York Curatorial Seminar by Independent Curators International (ICI). The Distance of Blue is her first independently curated online exhibition.