倦 e-nnui: CFGNY, Tao Hui
Hua International is honored to present e-nnui, an exhibition by New York-based art collective CFGNY and Chinese artist Tao Hui.
The exhibition title e-nnui is derived from a modified spelling of the word “ennui,” evoking a sense of weariness and emotional fatigue. The Chinese title “倦” (juàn, or “weariness”) conveys a similar feeling of exhaustion, while also alluding phonetically to the term “内卷” (nèijuǎn, or “involution”), referencing the social phenomenon of excessive internal competition. In our contemporary context, fatigue is no longer merely a personal sentiment but a form of collective perception. The “e-” prefix suggests our current reality, one shaped by digitalization, network aesthetics, and the desires of mediated labor, which forms the shared backdrop for the practices and recent works of both CFGNY and Tao Hui.
Starting from the concept of “e-labour,” the exhibition examines the new modes of labor and consumption that permeate our daily lives: the continuous generation of images, the rapid replication of popular aesthetics, the dilution and redistribution of attention. Together, these dynamics contribute to a structural fatigue embedded in our online existence. Approaching the theme of “electronic exhaustion” from different trajectories, the artists offer a cross-sectional observation of this phenomenon. e-nnui becomes both material and clue—a slow visual excavation that reveals a subtle intertextuality between production and aesthetics.
CFGNY (Concept Foreign Garments New York) is an art collective founded in New York in 2016. Their work centers on the idea of “vaguely Asian,” a concept that does not define identity but rather responds to the ways race, culture, and visual perception are generalized and misread within global contexts. Continuing their focus on “in-betweenness” and visual construction, CFGNY starts from traditional craft practices to re-examine the tensions between digital simulation and material translation. By deconstructing and recomposing the logic between materials and images, they create an unstable viewing experience across media. The collective highlights the visual residues of cultural appropriation, framing them as forms of “digital handcraft” in the age of online imagery.
Tao Hui continues his established visual practice by directly confronting the intertwined effects of popular media and visual emotion. Through video, he constructs a pseudo-reality that feels eerily familiar. Familiar aesthetic codes, repetitive visual rhetoric, and hollow emotional cues combine to form his sustained exploration of “e-labour.” Tao examines how individual perception is constantly mobilized and consumed within digital environments, reflecting on the inescapable structures of participation and emotional burden in contemporary society.
Through material choreography and spatial arrangement, CFGNY and Tao Hui construct visibility mechanisms that render the formation, reinforcement, and contestation of cultural meaning tangible. In this process, relationships among ethnicity, otherness, and epistemic power are continuously redefined.
