Undercurrent Softness
Solo exhibition
Hive Center for Contemporary Art
2023

The Chinese title of this exhibition is borrowed from the geological term ‘asthenosphere’, which refers to a deformable and ductile physical environment consisting of a mixture of solids and melting at an average depth of between 70 and 220 km below ground. The boundaries of the asthenosphere are not well defined and and not clearly separated from the lithosphere with a gradual transition. This indeterminate stratigraphic state implicitly reflects some of the pivotal elements of the artist’s work, namely the alchemical integration and synthesis of different materials and the reorganisation and reconstruction of incompatible temporal and spatial scales. These traces of deviation and overlap between geological allegory and supposedly real events manifest the contingency and stochastic nature of the recorded history. Their ambiguous forms in the works very often represent deliberately framed transitory states, temporary appearances and eternal moments in the midst of certain changes. The artist captures and embraces the natural and technological objects that move between the extreme macroscopic and microscopic scales with poetic fossils and relics. The moment of birth and death appears slow and imminent in this solidified sculptural state, indicating a further entanglement between time, history and living creatures.

The ecological fictions embodied in the sculptures and moving images suggest a non-human planetary context, where evolution, infection, parasitism and mutation are central to the narrative, and the metaphors of decay that emerge from the ever-changing materiality of the creative process manifest complex relationship between human society and technology as it evolves. The artist is fascinated by time, and by examining the multiple trajectories of the co-evolution of animals, plants, fungi and minerals, she seeks to resituate human existence from a historical future on the scale of deep time, whereby she explores the pluralistic relationship between the self and the material world.

Film still, Of Shape Offshore, 2023, one channel video with sound, 13 mins 55 secs








Of Shape Offshore
2023
Stoneware, seashell fragments, barnacles, porcelain, glass, sand, gravels, plastic, rubber, paper, coral, petrified leather, horsebone, fish bones, rusted socket, whale earbone
Dimensions variable
















Of Shape Offshore traces a constellation of spatiotemporal events as “offshore”: One that transcends specific localities and temporalities, activates the elusive and indefinable boundary, a marginal world that is continuously shaped by the relentless movement of past and present. The sculptures are created with material residues collected from the Brooklyn Dead Horse Bay - an abandoned beach, a historically designated location for processing dead animals and urban waste and a former landfill. For decades, animal remains and detritus of objects buried half a century ago have been reappearing at the shoreline of Dead Horse Bay as part of the exposure of landfill due to climate change, storm erosion, and rising sea levels. The area was closed in 2020 as radioactive matter was detected among human artifacts.

With sculptures that fossilize the present, the reconstructed archipelago of decaying remnants symbolizes the sedimented debris layers of our vast compressed contemporary lives and deaths. The video unravels a speculative cosmology meditating on the earth's history, geotrauma, and queer pluralism of our ancestry. Spiraling downward the morphing evolutionary time, the dreamlike voyage leads to the pre-human, pre-mammalian worlds while alluding to deep historical futures.

Installation view, Aranya Art Center, 2023
















Spine, 2023, stoneware, phosphorite, phosphate ore, dimensions variable







Foram I, 2023, glazed stoneware, 52 x 19 x 30 cm

foram II, 2023, glazed stoneware, 39 x 30 x 10 cm

Odont, Spine, Foram
2023
Stoneware, phosphorite
Dimensions variable


This body of work originates from the tracing of the circulation of matter between inorganic and organic bodies: from free-floating elements in shallow seas billions of years ago, to supporting structures for genetic material and metabolism in living organisms; from teeth and bones gradually emerging inside soft-bodied organisms to the first group of vertebrates venturing onto land; from phosphorite deposits formed by the accumulation of petrified remains to the continuous seepage and return of mining waste in geological strata. It begins with the biological evolution driven by the competition for phosphorus in the Cambrian oceans and continues with the extraction, mining, transformation, and exile of phosphorus in the human era. These two threads intertwine in sculptural form, revealing the unfathomable entanglement of ancient kinship and alienating residues in deep time. In the process of conceiving the artwork, the artist traveled to Weng'an, Guizhou, to visit a fossil group preserving primitive life from 600 million years ago through phosphate mineralization. In the same region, phosphate ore and solid waste phosphogypsum accumulated from tailings were collected for a series of material experiments.
Foram series is drawn from the single-celled marine planktonic organism foraminifera, which has been living in the open ocean since the Cambrian period. They are capable of secreting calcium or silica to form shells, and their remains contribute to the formation of thick layers of chalk, limestone, and reefs. As one of the oldest protists, their inorganic bodies hold clues to climate and ecological changes. The original sculptures are digitally modeled based on machine learning-generated hybrid foram species and then recreated through 3D printing, mold-making and casting, assembling, and hand sculpting to create mutating forms.

As they folded in and breached out (ruffled orifice)
2022
Glazed stoneware
15 x 14 x 13 inches


As they folded in and breached out (turquoise mouth flowering)
2022
Glazed stoneware
20 x 9 x 9 inches


As they folded in and breached out (shelless)
2022
Glazed stoneware
20 x 9 x 9 inches



As they folded in and breached out (Moss)
2022
Glazed stoneware
13 x 9.5 x 10 inches


As they folded in and breached out (three leggy)
2022
Glazed stoneware
12 x 8 x 8 inches


As they folded in and breached out (bursting)
2023
Glaze stoneware
18.5 x 12 x 12 inches


As they folded in and breached out (tentacular)
2022
Glazed stoneware
17 x 10 x 11 inches

As they folded in and breached out (sprout)
2023
Glazed stoneware
11 x 7 x 7 inches

As they folded in and breached out (slough) I
2023
Glazed stoneware
18 x 11 x 10 inches


As they folded in and breached out (slough) II
2023
Glazed stoneware
18 x 11 x 10 inches

As they folded in and breached out (swirling)
2023
Glazed stoneware
10 x 9 x 9 inches

As they folded in and breached out (ridge)
2024
Glazed stoneware
16 x 12 x 13 inches

 

pabulite (wet flame)
2022
Glazed stoneware
39 x 28 x 3 inches



pabulite (eye of the sea portals)
2022
Glazed stoneware
39 x 28 x 2.5 inches




pabulite (swirling teeth)
2023
Glazed stoneware
33 x 33 x 6 inches




pabulite (primordial bliss)
2023
Glazed stoneware
31 x 38 x 4 inches




pabulite (fin)
2024
Glazed stoneware
32 x 36 x 5 inches