Materials
Cotton thread, bricks and concrete found at the construction site, photographs (printed on paper), acrylic paint, wooden frame
Technique
Print out photograph on paper → collage on frame → paint with acrylic paint → attach many screws to the inner frame of the panel → tie thread to the screws and wrap it around small pieces of broken bricks and concrete → repeat until each piece is connected by the thread.
Concept
It is said that the Chinese character “人 -people-” represents the way people support each other. But to me, it seems like each person has some gravity and pulling each other. (The rubble fragments in the artwork represent the people, and the thread represents the tension between the people.) I especially felt that when I started living in Shanghai where people around the world and the other places in China come over to live and leave in short period. The pulling force is the stress necessary to live, and by pulling from here and there, people stabilize their dangling bodies.
However, if the balance of tension is lost at one point, the thread breaks or loosely loosens. It can lead to stress and excessive relaxation, and can disrupt people’s life rhythms. However, people try to restore the thread to regain life balance.
And the thread starts from a connection with people around you, crosses the sea, and fills the whole world. When I imagine that the whole earth is surrounded by countless meshes I feel overwhelmed, but it seems like a beautiful scene at the same time.
The background of this series
This series was born in 2008 when I lived in Shanghai. For me, the city of Shanghai is a wide-minded city that has unconditionally accepted people who appear and disappear somewhere in short term, including me as a foreigner, but at the same time it seems to be a very pitiful city for me. I think this series was born to leave my impression of Shanghai as artworks. This series use pieces of Shanghai’s demolished house, so I can only get materials in Shanghai.