Steam of Life – Without Asking East or West 1, 2025
Mixed media on canvas, 56 × 40.5 cm
Jingmin Ren 任静敏
Presented by Plogix Gallery, London · 2025
XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年
IMPRINT · LANGUAGE · MEMORY · TIME
An evolving seal-centred artistic practice exploring how imprint, language, memory and lived experience unfold through time.
ABOUT XINYIN LIUNIAN
XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年 is an ongoing artistic practice created by Jingmin Ren 任静敏, bringing together Chinese seals, calligraphy and contemporary artistic expression to explore memory, time, consciousness and inner experience.
The name Xinyin Liunian can be understood as an imprint of the heart carried through the flow of time. At the heart of the practice is Ren’s personal collection of approximately 1,000 Chinese leisure seals (闲章), accumulated over many years. Carrying words, phrases, symbols and cultural meanings, these seals form an evolving archive through which personal memory, cultural inheritance and lived experience intersect.
Within XINYIN LIUNIAN®, the seal is more than a traditional mark of identity or authorship. Each impression can become a trace of a particular thought, feeling or moment — an imprint of inner experience within the continuous passage of time.
Drawing on Chinese cultural and philosophical traditions while responding to contemporary life, the practice explores how memory, consciousness and human experience leave their traces through time.
THE SEAL COLLECTION
A Living Archive of Language, Memory and Time | 语言、记忆与时间的生命档案
At the foundation of XINYIN LIUNIAN® is Ren’s long-term engagement with Chinese seals, accumulated and studied over many years. Carrying words, phrases, symbols and cultural meanings, the collection forms a living archive through which memory, cultural inheritance and lived time intersect.
WORKING ARCHIVE | 工作档案
Ren documents selected seals through working seal manuals (yinpu 印谱), bringing together seal impressions and handwritten records. These manuals preserve, organise and contextualise the collection, while allowing individual seals to be revisited, compared and selected across different moments of lived experience.
Rather than functioning as a fixed historical catalogue, the working archive remains active and evolving. It creates a space in which inherited cultural forms can be encountered again and enter new relationships with memory, time and contemporary artistic practice.
Working seal manual (yinpu 印谱), combining seal impressions with handwritten records from Jingmin Ren’s evolving archive.
BOOKMARK PRACTICE | 书签实践
The bookmark practice developed as a visual diary through repeated encounters with selected seals. Each bookmark connects particular impressions with a moment of thought, feeling or lived experience, allowing inherited words and forms to acquire renewed personal resonance over time.
Through repeated acts of selection, arrangement and imprinting, these intimate works gradually developed into an evolving visual archive. The relationships formed through the bookmark practice later began to influence Ren’s larger contemporary compositions.
Accumulated bookmark works from XINYIN LIUNIAN®, combining Chinese seal impressions, coloured paper and tassels.
EVOLVING PRACTICE
XINYIN LIUNIAN® reimagines the traditional role of Chinese seals within contemporary artistic practice. The practice draws on the diversity of seal forms, designs, script styles and visual structures. Through selection, juxtaposition and recomposition, Ren brings related characters and themes into new configurations, generating distinct ideas, expressions and emotional resonances.
Ren moves the seal beyond its conventional function as a mark of identity, authorship or authentication, transforming it from a supporting element into an independent visual and artistic language.
Across calligraphy, painting, mixed media and laser engraving on wood and bamboo, seal impressions become structures in their own right — carrying memory, cultural traces and inner experience while extending from paper into material and spatial forms.
In June 2026, Ren completed her first successful laser-engraving experiment on wood, establishing a new material direction within the continuing evolution of XINYIN LIUNIAN®.
First successful laser-engraving experiment combining Chinese characters and seal motifs on wood, June 2026, Sydney, 33°S.
EARLY PUBLIC DOCUMENTATION | 早期公开记录
2025 — SEAL-CENTRED PRACTICE
A third-party feature published in September 2025 documented Jingmin Ren’s early seal-centred practice, including Chinese leisure seals and seal-imprinted bookmark works. This public record precedes and provides context for the continuing development of XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年.
2025年9月发表的一篇第三方专题，记录了任静敏以中国闲章及印章书签为核心的早期实践。这项公开记录早于XINYIN LIUNIAN®｜心印流年后续的发展，并为其形成过程提供了可追溯的背景。
FROM SEAL TO CONTEMPORARY PAINTING
Standing Independently Amidst Mountains and Seas | 独立山海间 was created during Ren’s residency at Bondi Pavilion, supported by Waverley Council through the Bondi Pavilion Creative Collaboration Program.
Within the XINYIN LIUNIAN® – Bondi Series, traditional Chinese seal impressions become structural elements within contemporary painting. Ren describes them as “visual anchors” and points of concentrated energy, creating stability within flowing compositions while carrying traces of time and cultural memory.
In Standing Independently Amidst Mountains and Seas | 独立山海间, the permanence of the seal enters into dialogue with the movement of Bondi’s ocean, light and changing sky — bringing together contemporary coastal experience and a cultural language extending across centuries.
The work attracted public and media attention during its presentation at Bondi Pavilion and was featured by SBS Chinese and China.com.
READ FEATURE: XINYIN LIUNIAN® AT BONDI PAVILION — CHINA.COM →
EXHIBITIONS & PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT | 展览与公众参与
JING (静) · STILLNESS
XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年 · 2025
In JING (静) · Stillness, a principal seal bearing the character “静” forms the visual centre of the composition. It is surrounded by a constellation of related seal impressions, each interpreting the same character through distinct forms, designs and script styles. When placed within different relationships of colour, space, material and composition, the character “静” generates new ideas, expressions and emotional resonances across changing contexts. Together, these elements create a visual structure in which stillness exists within movement and transformation.
The work explores stillness not as an absence of movement, but as clarity, strength and inner light — an inner state capable of remaining steady amid complexity and change. Within XINYIN LIUNIAN®, this state of stillness becomes an imprint carried through time, connecting inner experience, the external world and the continuing evolution of the practice.
STANDING INDEPENDENTLY AMIDST MOUNTAINS AND SEAS | 独立山海间
XINYIN LIUNIAN® – BONDI SERIES · GOOD TOGETHER, 2026
Standing Independently Amidst Mountains and Seas | 独立山海间 was exhibited in Good Together at Bondi Pavilion Gallery, a Waverley Council presentation in Sydney in 2026.
HONG KONG NEWS AGENCY · 2026
XINYIN LIUNIAN® – Bondi Series at Good Together
WRITINGS & REFLECTIONS
Alongside the visual practice, XINYIN LIUNIAN® extends through ongoing writings and reflections on Chinese seals, cultural memory, time and inner experience.
Seals of Auspiciousness · 吉
Exploring the many meanings of “吉” through selected Chinese leisure seals (闲章), presented on bookmark forms (书签) and reinterpreted through contemporary composition as an independent visual language of blessing, memory and cultural continuity.
Heart Seals of Blessings & Joy · 福喜 | Chinese Leisure Seals 闲章
Exploring blessings, joy and auspicious meanings through selected Chinese leisure seals (闲章), presented through bookmark forms and contemporary composition as a visual dialogue between cultural memory and lived experience.
The Hidden Wisdom in Today’s Seals | Chinese Leisure Seals 闲章
Three Chinese leisure seals (闲章) from XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年 bring together ideas of inner awareness, freedom and enduring blessing, creating a contemporary dialogue between cultural memory and lived experience.
Tiny seals, yet infinite meaning.
方寸之间，千年之思。
Within XINYIN LIUNIAN®, the small scale of the seal opens into an expansive field of thought. A few carved characters can carry language, memory, philosophy, emotion and cultural time.
Each impression enters new relationships with colour, material, place and lived experience. Its meaning remains open, shifting as the seal moves between different contexts — connecting past and present, cultural inheritance and contemporary life, outer change and the inner world.
Each composition becomes a dialogue — between eras and between souls.
在XINYIN LIUNIAN®｜心印流年中，印章的方寸之形开启出广阔的思想空间。寥寥数个文字，可以承载语言、记忆、哲思、情感与文化时间。
每一道印迹都进入色彩、材料、地域与生命经验所形成的新关系之中。它的意义并非固定不变，而是在不同语境中持续生成——连接过去与现在、文化传承与当代生活、外部世界的变化与人的内在体验。
每一次构成，都是一场跨越时代与心灵的对话。
XINYIN LIUNIAN® | 心印流年
An imprint of the heart through the flow of time.