Touch it, please do not touch it is an installation which explores the topic of time, death and memory. The inspiration came from my personal memory with my late grandma. We were very close till her death but I don’t have a memory of holding her hands, not to say hugs, and that becomes one of my biggest regrets of life.

The installation is composed of two parts, both interactive. In part one, I use palm tree as a metaphor of her hands and combine with texts, rendering a certain poetic and fugitive quality in this project. The portraits I took of palm tree showing the dialectical relationship between presence and absence. I use cotton rope to tie them together so they’ll swing when audience walk by. In part two, I pixilated an old photo of my grandma’s hand, which I didn’t have the opportunity to hold. I blow the image and covered it with translucent paper, and further cut them into 16 pieces. With gallery lights on, the photo can hardly be recognized as well as our own memory, distorted and vague after a long time period.



Touch it, no.1, 2019, Rice Paper, cotton rope, vellum paper with handwriting, 13x19
Touch it, no.2, 2019, Archival Inkjet print, vellum paper, 24x30
Please dont touch it, 2019, Nylon gloves and bell jar, dimensions variable


back ︎︎︎