Same, Same, Synonym at LDF24

A collaborative exhibition exploring the shifting relationships between language, action, and presence.

Presented as part of Alsolike Gallery’s 2024 programme for the London Design Festival and to mark the launch of Synonym Lab’s new membership platform, we invite you to experience an exhibition curated by interdisciplinary curator Yanru Hu that blurs the boundary between art and action. Same, Same, Synonym features works by emerging London-based artists Luke Felstead, Caterina Danzico, Xuan Yeo, and Aiden Scott McClymont — and is structured not around static objects, but around live interaction and shared authorship.

Visitors will take part in a series of interconnected activities designed to activate the space and disrupt conventional roles between artist and audience. From racing toy cars and weaving tapestries to assembling contraptions and deciphering forms, each task is a playful yet critical gesture in a larger choreography of meaning-making.

At its core, this exhibition dares to ask:

In an age of visibility and performance, is the artist more powerful than the artwork?

Borrowing from Actor-Network Theory, Same, Same, Synonym treats artists, materials, spaces, and viewers as co-agents in a fluid and ever-shifting network. The result is not a fixed exhibition, but a living ecology of exchange — a system of translation, tension, and collective construction.

“Synonym” here becomes a working concept —

a refusal of hierarchy,

a method of substitution,

a commitment to continual redefinition.

Same, but not the same.

Synonym, but never identical.