Some feelings are difficult to hear behind the words “I'm fine.”
Through loss, illness, and caregiving, people need opportunities to express themselves, to be heard, and sometimes simply to pause. 还在 Remain brings together art therapists, designers, and hospice care workers to respond through shared art-making, thoughtful spaces, and communication practices.
We bring art into hospitals, concerts, and group gatherings. Color, sound, materials, and movement become ways to connect with ourselves and with one another. Each project begins with a real setting and real needs, and takes shape through collaboration with participants and care teams.
Making room for feelings that words cannot always hold.
Group Art-Based Healing at Two Concerts
At two concerts at Haidian Hospital, Remain delivered group art-based healing and co-creation projects using wind chimes and seasonal sand art. Each event reached more than 200 people.
People gathered with different stories. A shared creative language offered a way for personal remembrance to find expression within a group, while allowing each person to participate at their own pace.
Poetry of Frequency: Messages in the Wind
At Haidian Hospital's 2025 Song Gift concert, we delivered Poetry of Frequency, a group project centered on messages and wind chimes.
Participants placed feelings and messages into individual musical-note-shaped components, which came together as a shared installation. Writing and making gave remembrance a tangible form. Hanging the pieces together allowed individual expressions to become a connection others could see.
The wind chimes held thoughts of those who had died and explored how their voices might continue through remembrance. Words once held within hospital rooms, memories, and private moments found a new place in the work.
Poetry of Frequency: a detail of the shared wind-chime installation.
River of the Four Seasons: A Shared Memory in Sand
In 2026, we delivered River of the Four Seasons, a collective sand-art remembrance project at Haidian Hospital's concert themed around the four seasons.
The project drew on seasonal imagery and the tasks of mourning. Pale green, warm orange, yellow, and deep green sand carried associations with growth, warmth, farewell, and reflection. Participants poured the colored sand by hand, bringing individual memories into a shared artwork.
These images offered a language for expression and room for different feelings and rhythms. Some people wished to share words; others chose to complete a quiet gesture. The act of making gave both approaches a place.
Handmade cloisonné memorial bracelets offered participants a small keepsake to carry beyond the gathering. The completed sand artwork was displayed in Haidian Hospital's hospice ward after the event, keeping the collective act of remembrance present within the care environment.
River of the Four Seasons: the sand-art remembrance work at the event.
A Healing Space in Infectious-Disease Care
In a completed project within the infectious-disease wound-care setting at You'an Hospital, we brought art, human-centered care, and spatial design into an everyday clinical environment.
The work considered two connected experiences: preparation and reassurance before care, and treatment with dignity. In the outer room, domestic-style seating and a conversation corner, sensory elements such as art and sound, and peer messages and information supported opportunities to pause and communicate. Within the treatment space, art, privacy arrangements, and environmental details addressed the experience of receiving care.
A message wall allowed encouragement to pass between people who might never meet. Photographs and a few words left behind made companionship visible. These details were considered in relation to the practical needs of patients, families, and staff.
The project gave whole-person care a spatial expression, recognizing that care is also experienced in waiting, conversation, and accompaniment.
Healing space in infectious-disease care: arranging the message and photograph wall
Four Expressions: Practicing the Words That Matter
Thank you. I love you. I'm sorry. Goodbye. Familiar words can become difficult when they matter most.
Our Si Dao Qing Yuan Lu workshop draws on Chinese cultural traditions and opera, alongside approaches from communication psychology. Through role-play, props, and improvisation, participants practice gratitude, love, apology, and farewell within imagined life situations.
Following approximately six months of development and feedback from the Shouhu Hospice Center at Capital Medical University and Haidian Hospital's hospice care team, the project was delivered as a formal training workshop. Taking a role offered an indirect way into expression, allowing participants to explore words they might find difficult to say in everyday life.
Participant feedback described new understandings of apology, love, and farewell, as well as a renewed sense of agency in communication. These responses showed us how art can offer care teams a practical way to learn and reflect together.
A moment from the Four Expressions communication workshop.
From Objects and Gatherings to Spaces
Wind chimes, colored sand, theatre, and spatial design are different forms that respond to related needs: a material for feelings, an opportunity for expression, and a place for relationships to continue.
Our practice includes shared art-making, life-remembrance events, art and human-centered design within care environments, and communication workshops for care teams. We develop each project in relation to its participants, location, and care context.
Our aesthetic lives in the touch of materials, the scale of a space, and the way participation is invited. We seek approachable works, processes that allow pauses, and opportunities for each person to find their own expression.
Explore a Collaboration
If you represent a hospital, hospice organization, community, or another team concerned with compassionate care, we welcome a conversation about your setting, participants, goals, and timing. Together, we can explore shared art-making, remembrance events, a spatial project, or a communication workshop suited to your needs.
For collaboration inquiries, contact www.tminorlab@gmail.com.