2023-2024, United Kingdom
A collection of handmade books
“Performing Landscape” 120cm x 190cm, Epson Matt paper
“山河”
“A year of coming back”
“body map”
Exhibited in Keep in Touch, 3rdwrld x Broken Englizh, Greenwich West Community & Arts Centre, London
RCA 2024 Sculpture MA, School of Arts & Humanities postgraduate exhibition, London
Festus: SCULPT, LIFT: The Movement (presented by RCA sculpture), LIFT Studio, London
Photography is resistant to language; people look for meaning from images because of the unsettledness of consciousness. Perhaps the term "rejection" is too intense, but Walker Evans refused to name his photographic works, even though being named, the photos by Evans would permeate out from the framework of naming. In other images, our vision can settle from themselves because after our vision arrive at their objects, they converge into a point and then rebound to another point in our consciousness. Our consciousness is exiled to a floating status quo that expects to fall to one end. The relationship between exile and being exiled is very ambiguous indeed, as if you always expect me to say something, but I remain silent all along.
Why fail to discover that without words and meanings would unsettle us? This is about "self" and "world". "Self" and "world" always pull together in tension, just like the inner mind and external world are interdependent but also mutually exclusive. Consciousness always tries to fill the silent void created by images that you face straight forward; you are speechless. It turns out to be intolerable when you fail to figure out anything.
Photography is the recording of the thing itself, returning to the object itself, and returning to the photographer's feeling. We always look at things based on the "self" of the inner mind, but simultaneously, "Self" also conceals the most real gesture of the world. "Every time they are taken as photos, they are beyond the confusion of the photographer, beyond the twisted and obscure emotion, becoming the simple thing." Photos should have the feature of excluding the author. It is impossible to feel straightforward about personal memories and emotions. So, we rely on words and languages to explain ourselves. I have considered whether vision can only arrive at the surface level of human beings' subjective consciousness. If we do not apply literature to add meanings, vision would be in a situation of very ambiguous uncertainty. "Under a certain meaning, photography can not make any assertion, although it also has the angst of failing to assert 'what is this,' where could make an assertion. Conversely, the reader starts engaging."
"As a human being, it is unavoidable that taking photos with many of my thoughts, for an object being taken (no matter how hard I rock my brain during the process of taking pictures) but when it becomes a photo, it fails to convey to the audiences...photography has too much uncertainty. However, on the contrary, I reckon that the place where one could not express ‘self’ is where photography, the medium, possesses the senses of freedom and openness." Perhaps photography has nothing more than the distinct drive of the desire to document some moments. From a world of subjective objects to another world of pure objectives is a resistance to language. But seeing and screening are highly subjective. Why do you like this image, what visual experience does this image bring to you, and what is the constructive signification organized from displaying the images? The photographer puts and arranges items from the objective world into an order. Is the state of no-self still a sort of "self"? Perhaps, for me, they will return to the most private state again.
On the plane went back to China; I read "Slow Homecoming", drifted on the plane, and wandered in his words. The depiction of New York City in the book: the white smoke in the evening streets, at sunrise time the luminous water body turns from darker grey to grey-blue, sunshine spreads around the city, the experiences of encountering Indian women, a person wandering around water's edge, these words caught my emotion at the plane. All the experiences, memories, and the landscape that seems to have met before are tangling together to form rivers and paths.
I continuously looked back, feeling uncomfortable in my body, recalling my most original impressions from childhood, searching for and finding, always accompanied by a very intense and hoarse emotion. In this book, I chose photos of ordinary scenes and excerpts from a narrator's scattered words.
In the days of leaving my hometown, the shadow I left before always pulled me and lingered in my vision. They grow more and more, pervading like bubbles, wrapping me in a bubble for dozing. These shadows create eternally unchanging dreams, polishing the stone in my mind day by day. Every day, new physiognomy, new landscapes, and new cultures rushing over my vision constantly beat on me; gradually, their forms concealed in the earliest days emerge.
Why fail to discover that without words and meanings would unsettle us? This is about "self" and "world". "Self" and "world" always pull together in tension, just like the inner mind and external world are interdependent but also mutually exclusive. Consciousness always tries to fill the silent void created by images that you face straight forward; you are speechless. It turns out to be intolerable when you fail to figure out anything.
Photography is the recording of the thing itself, returning to the object itself, and returning to the photographer's feeling. We always look at things based on the "self" of the inner mind, but simultaneously, "Self" also conceals the most real gesture of the world. "Every time they are taken as photos, they are beyond the confusion of the photographer, beyond the twisted and obscure emotion, becoming the simple thing." Photos should have the feature of excluding the author. It is impossible to feel straightforward about personal memories and emotions. So, we rely on words and languages to explain ourselves. I have considered whether vision can only arrive at the surface level of human beings' subjective consciousness. If we do not apply literature to add meanings, vision would be in a situation of very ambiguous uncertainty. "Under a certain meaning, photography can not make any assertion, although it also has the angst of failing to assert 'what is this,' where could make an assertion. Conversely, the reader starts engaging."
"As a human being, it is unavoidable that taking photos with many of my thoughts, for an object being taken (no matter how hard I rock my brain during the process of taking pictures) but when it becomes a photo, it fails to convey to the audiences...photography has too much uncertainty. However, on the contrary, I reckon that the place where one could not express ‘self’ is where photography, the medium, possesses the senses of freedom and openness." Perhaps photography has nothing more than the distinct drive of the desire to document some moments. From a world of subjective objects to another world of pure objectives is a resistance to language. But seeing and screening are highly subjective. Why do you like this image, what visual experience does this image bring to you, and what is the constructive signification organized from displaying the images? The photographer puts and arranges items from the objective world into an order. Is the state of no-self still a sort of "self"? Perhaps, for me, they will return to the most private state again.
On the plane went back to China; I read "Slow Homecoming", drifted on the plane, and wandered in his words. The depiction of New York City in the book: the white smoke in the evening streets, at sunrise time the luminous water body turns from darker grey to grey-blue, sunshine spreads around the city, the experiences of encountering Indian women, a person wandering around water's edge, these words caught my emotion at the plane. All the experiences, memories, and the landscape that seems to have met before are tangling together to form rivers and paths.
I continuously looked back, feeling uncomfortable in my body, recalling my most original impressions from childhood, searching for and finding, always accompanied by a very intense and hoarse emotion. In this book, I chose photos of ordinary scenes and excerpts from a narrator's scattered words.
In the days of leaving my hometown, the shadow I left before always pulled me and lingered in my vision. They grow more and more, pervading like bubbles, wrapping me in a bubble for dozing. These shadows create eternally unchanging dreams, polishing the stone in my mind day by day. Every day, new physiognomy, new landscapes, and new cultures rushing over my vision constantly beat on me; gradually, their forms concealed in the earliest days emerge.