UNSPOKEN CODES EXHIBITION
Unspoken Codes marked the debut exhibition of Common Names, a youth-led platform founded by Cici Zhu and dedicated to collective authorship, emotional connection, and participatory art. Presented at Art Share L.A. from October 18 to 31, 2025, the exhibition explored how gestures from individuals across different ages, cultures, and languages can coalesce into a shared visual vocabulary. This is a language shaped not by words, but by presence, rhythm, and care.
At the center of the exhibition was a large-scale installation of over 2,500 hand-painted hexagonal tiles, contributed by participants from around the world. Intimate in scale yet expansive in emotion, these tiles formed an evolving archive of collective expression, inviting viewers to encounter the quiet codes that shape human connection.
A gallery presentation featured works by ten international artists: Crystal Jean Baranyk, Wen-you Cai, Bryan Cruz, Lopamudra Goyal, Cindy Leung, WonderBuhle Mbambo, Rachele Moscatelli, Lerato Nkosi, Danny Romeril, and Kiko Thomas, whose contributions offered individual responses to the exhibition’s central questions.
“How do we hold space for one another?
What shifts when visibility is shared rather than owned?”
What shifts when visibility is shared rather than owned?”
The Infinite Sea (Voyage), 2013
Looking at Stettheimer at the Met, 2025
Inner Demons, 2023
Spaces We Carry, 2024
To Betray (California Dream), 2024
Blonde hair, 2020
Commencement, 2025
Midden 3, 2025
Losing my sense of self, 2025
WonderBuhle Mbambo
Bravery in Silhouette I, 2025
A dedicated room honored the collaboration with Saint Mark’s School, which lost nearly its entire campus in the Eaton Fire earlier that year. Despite this profound disruption, 170 students contributed hexagon tiles, which Cici Zhu later arranged into a large formation of the school’s lion emblem, creating a moving testament to resilience, community, and rebuilding through creativity.
To extend the exhibition’s participatory spirit, a workshop space invited visitors to paint their own hexagon tiles and place them on a growing wall installation, allowing the archive to remain open and in motion.
Unspoken Codes affirmed that art need not be tied to fluency, expertise, or spectacle; instead, it can emerge through shared attention, collective making, and the unspoken gestures that connect us. As the first public chapter of Common Names, the exhibition marks only a beginning, an opening gesture toward future projects that continue to expand the possibilities of shared authorship and collective expression.