Shengzhe

Shengzhe

On a Slow Boat to the East presents an ongoing photographic project by the China-based artist Shenzhe.

Drawing inspiration from Yukio Mishima, as well as Japan’s urban and underground cultures of the Showa period, the artist does not simply quote these references, but reconfigures them through a deeply personal vision of what he perceives as “the East.”

The journey eastward—from China toward Japan—functions both as a physical movement and as an imaginative voyage across layers of cultural memory and aesthetic sensibility. Rather than positioning Japan through a Western-centered framework, Shenzhe approaches its visual culture from within an East Asian perspective, allowing overlooked nuances and resonances to surface.

With no fixed destination, the slow-moving boat becomes a metaphor for an open-ended journey. Viewers are invited to drift between past and present, reality and imagination, encountering fragments of stories that quietly unfold along the way.