MRes graduate Xiaohan Luo is presenting a new solo exhibition, Outsider, Elsewhere at The Handbag Factory Gallery in London this March.
Sound is often understood as something that is heard. Yet sound is never only audible. It moves through space as vibration, movement, and change: light shifts, bodies turn, water trembles, and environments respond. Long before it reaches the ear, sound already circulates through the world in visible and physical ways. Outsider, Elsewhere begins from this condition.
The exhibition considers what it means to inhabit a world structured by sound while encountering it through traces rather than through hearing itself. The outsider moves in — navigating sound through signals that appear elsewhere, beyond the ear.
Xiaohan Luo is an experimental filmmaker whose work explores how people with hearing loss orient themselves within everyday environments. After experiencing hearing loss herself, Luo became more aware of how sound is often understood through a combination of sensory signals rather than hearing alone. Vibrations, movement, colour, changes in light, and the behaviour of people within a space can all indicate what is happening around us. Her films draw attention to these signals, showing how environments reveal sound through visible and physical activity.
Many of Luo’s works develop through field recordings and direct observation in public and transitional spaces such as streets, riversides, stations, and forests. Rather than staging scenes, she records situations as they unfold, paying close attention to movement within the space and the interactions between people, objects, and light. These details create a layered sense of place, allowing viewers to recognise how sound circulates through an environment even when it is not directly heard.
Outsider, Elsewhere brings together a group of Luo’s works, including Red Veil, Number, Language & Sound, A Broken Voice, Am I.. I am, Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ (The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den), and her latest film No Traveller Returns.
12–17 March 2026
PV 13th March Friday 6pm-9pm
Art Directed by Finlay Taylor
Curated by June & Nick Banning
