Photo Credit: Shani Engelbrecht, Jack Fenby, Ying He & ProLab Image

Gallery 3

We Tea

Jingwei Bu

We Tea is an immersive installation developed through Bu’s ongoing studio-based tea ceremony practice since 2022. Rooted in intimate gatherings with friends, family, and visitors, each session becomes a durational act of presence where the slow rituals of making and sharing tea quietly document shared time and space. 

Traces left behind: tea residues, spontaneous poems, and shifting gestures form a living archive of these encounters. Sound emerges as a residue of performance, while tea stains accumulate as visible imprints of time. Together, these elements build a contemplative environment that invites deep listening, both inward and outward. 

Since 2022, reused A4 copy paper has become a core material within the tea ceremony, reflecting a contemporary approach to the intersection of impermanence and repetition, organic and mess production. Through this material, the work explores the evolving relationship between tea and paper, presence and absence, time and memory, drawing on Taoist and Chan (Zen) philosophies.

With a minimalist touch, We Tea brings together sensory experience, poetic traces, and philosophical inquiry. It offers a space for slowing down, being present, and sensing the subtle: a practice of quiet transformation through everyday rituals.

This exhibition is in partnership with Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE).