Xiaopeng Yuan: I, ma, ge, Backups, Nobody Knows

I, ma, ge, Backups, Nobody Knows – Xiaopeng Yuan
commune Press

Xiaopeng Yuan’s I, ma, ge, Backups, Nobody Knows collects snapshots made during travels through Japan between 2023 and 2025. Emerging from the artist’s ongoing archival project, the photographs record transient encounters and overlooked details: empty streets, light on tiled walls, the quiet intervals of movement. Working within the constraint of unfamiliar language and culture, Yuan adopts distance as method, allowing observation to become both act and subject. The resulting images, modest in scale and tone, form a study of looking itself – a reflection on photography’s capacity to preserve what is otherwise unremarked.