Articulated Fear, 2024, handmade paper, collage, and shredded calligraphy copybook, 18 x 24 inches
Nov 7 – Nov 21 | Opening Reception November 7, 1pm–9pm
COOP is pleased to present Refrain in Three Voices by Danqi Cai. Refrain in Three Voices explores how language acquisition and loss reshape cultural inheritance. Anchored by a multimedia installation combining projection-mapped animation and an original score for soprano and vibraphone, the exhibition invites viewers to break free from cultural indoctrination and reimagine inherited values. Handmade papers remix textbook illustrations and deconstruct Chinese scripts, echoing themes of adaptation, estrangement, and reconciliation. Across paper, sound, and light, recurring motifs—childhood vulnerability, linguistic uncertainty, and the unlearning of harmful values—reveal language as a site of transformation when we drop fear.
This will be Cais’ first exhibition in Nashville, and the artist will be present at the opening reception on November 7th. She will also be giving an artist talk at 11am on Saturday November 21st.
More about the Artist
Danqi Cai [dan-CHI Tsai] is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and Assistant Professor of Foundations at the University of Arkansas (UARK) in Fayetteville, AR. A bilingual artist who emigrated from China to the U.S. as a young adult, she uses papermaking, print media, and animation to explore how language shapes cultural inheritance, adaptation, and transformation. She remixes ancient Chinese characters and found instructional imagery to reimagine systems of knowledge transmission.
Danqi earned her MFA in Studio Art (Printmaking) from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her BFA in Printmaking and Humanistic Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited internationally at International Print Center New York, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad (Denmark), Stove Works, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, and the Bradbury Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include safer than words at Longwood University. Her work has been supported by residencies at the Banff Centre (Canada), Hambidge Center, Morgan Conservatory, and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. Her curatorial work has been presented at the Charlotte Street Foundation. Critical writing on her work has appeared in Burnaway and Sixty Inches From Center. She is a recipient of the 2024 Practicing Artist Grant through Mid-America Arts Alliance’s Artists 360 program and a 2026–2027 UARK School of Art Faculty Fellow bringing papermakers and art therapists to the campus and surrounding community.