2023

Woolen thread

 

I was born in a rural area in northern China and grew up in a brick house. When I went to primary school, my family moved to a six-story apartment. When I was in high school, we moved two more times, and after I came to Japan, my family moved again. As far back as I can remember, people around me have always been on the move. They hope to change their current life situation by constantly changing their environment.

With each time we moved, the house of my childhood memories was demolished, and a huge high-rise building was built on its site. Traces and evidence of the past gradually disappeared. Young people born in the 80s and my generation witness the process of urbanization and land development in China every day. These phenomena have become a part of our lives.

In this process, people’s emotions and bodies cannot respond quickly, and their brains cannot understand what is really happening in time because the visible changes in rural areas, cities, and daily life are happening too fast. Also, my parents‘ and grandparents’ generation cannot cope with the constant changes, and the rapidly expanding and transforming urban landscape.

In such circumstances, I often think of the traditional living space and dwellings of the Mongolian people. It is like a safe space that is structurally and visually stable. Similarly, the headwear and some decorations of some minority groups in northern China also have shapes similar to a Mongolian yurt.

The handcrafted sculptures shown in my exhibition are a re-construction and re-composition of the traditional living space and headwear of the Mongolian people. They form a poetic landscape. They are made of very soft materials using crochet methods and shaped bit by bit through manual labor and time accumulation. This long creative process is also a communication between me and my hometown in Inner Mongolia, between the past and present influenced by China‘s urbanization.