At the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, Time Garden by the Chinese artist Gulistan, who is active in Beijing, suggests a new encounter between East and West: an invitation to retrace the traces left along the legendary Silk Road by rethinking relationships, values, symbols, and codes that have defined these millennia-old cultures since their origins – cultures that are now increasingly less distant in a global age.
Educated between Beijing and Australia, Gulistan has exhibited internationally, including at the China Art Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Today Art Museum, the Guangdong Provincial Museum, the Poly Art Museum in Beijing, the National Normal University of Taiwan, the Sejong Hall in Seoul, and the Ramsay Museum in Düsseldorf; as well as in exhibitions in Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Germany, and Dubai. Among her exhibitions and recognitions in Italy, she was awarded the prestigious Contemporary Art Creation Award by the International Federation of Women Artists in Rome in 2020.
Gulistan, “Time Garden”. GNAMC – Foto via China – Eu Art Foundation ETS
The dialogue with the Eternal City, her interest in classical archaeology, and her engagement with the works of the masters in the GNAMC permanent collection are at the core of Time Garden, an exhibition curated by Gabriele Simongini, with the support of the Foundation for Chinese Art in Italy and the International Federation of Women Artists 923 Art Space. The aim is to outline an exhibition and experiential path that suggests a fusion between different aesthetic sensibilities: this emerges from the desire to reinterpret and combine philosophies and poetics that only today appear distant, through the stylistic language of legend—at times even epic—and through tones of fairy tale and dream, in a flow of reverie and imagery. This poetic dimension is accompanied by an interest in enhancing female identity and sensitivity from a contemporary global perspective.
Gulistan, “Time Garden”. GNAMC – Foto via China – Eu Art Foundation ETS
This vision is clearly reflected in the title Time Garden. For the artist, a reflection on time is crucial—not understood in a historical-chronological or linear sense. Rather, Gulistan focuses on a cyclical conception of time, rooted in being, memory, and its manifestations on both material and pictorial levels. This explains her interest in both Eastern and Western archaeology, in processes of symbolic encoding and decoding, and in the perception of memory itself—only to intentionally evade and elude it. Thus, while Gulistan’s artistic research is grounded in memory, the images she explores and presents collectively outline an imaginative and symbolic landscape that is both mental and spiritual: a celebration of the fluidity and beauty of poetic thought through the quintessential medium—painting.
Gulistan, “Time Garden”, installation view at GNAMC, ph. Olivia Rainaldi, courtesy GNAMC, Roma
This is evident in the series Fragments of Time, in which the artist combines earthy tones and the contemplative stillness of Morandi with the ochre red of the Dunhuang murals and with Eastern calligraphic lines. The series The Nature of Memory instead suggests the artist’s personal reflection on archaeological ruins, from which Eastern figurations emerge. In a more subjective, yet still representative section, Memory of the Portraits reveals a dialogue between the rarefaction techniques of ink on paper from Chinese tradition and classical Western portraiture. The Eastern metaphor of the garden as a privileged place of meditation thus lends the exhibition a new and compelling contemplative and aesthetic dimension.
Gulistan, “Time Garden”, installation view at GNAMC, ph. Olivia Rainaldi, courtesy GNAMC, Roma
At the foundation of Gulistan’s artistic research lies an exploration of light in painting. On the one hand, this is evident in her use of vivid and vibrant colors; on the other, more profoundly, her reflection aims to merge Eastern poetics—where light plays a role in achieving a contemplative void, clearly visible in her compositions—with the Western concept of the unfinished, resulting in an aesthetic of painterly flow. The vision of the sandstorms of Dunhuang ideally merges with the soft light of Rome, shaping a journey that is both subjective and cultural—one that can be experienced as a passage through memory, light, archaeology, and becoming.
Info:
Gulistan. Time Garden
Curated by Gabriele Simongini
GNAMC, Galleria di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome
March 7 – April 8, 2026
Gulistan Time Garden
She is interested in the visual, verbal and textual aspects of the Modern Contemporary Arts. From historical-artistic studies at the Cà Foscari University, Venice, she has specialized in teaching and curatorial practice at the IED, Rome, and Christie’s London. The field of her research activity focuses on the theme of Light from the 1950s to current times, ontologically considering artistic, phenomenological and visual innovation aspects.
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