Cemetery of Peach Blossoms 桃源陵园
Part I (Cremation) 2021-2022
The Cremation came from my memory of attending my grandmother’s funeral: People crying, heat from the cremation room, noise of the machine, ash of the body... All those things left a strong impact. In this series, landscape become to be the main subject. Soil is one of the necessary conditions for burial and holds a very unique position. It exists between life and death and is an important medium for the continuous cycle of life and death. I used wax and rocks to make candles, the process of burning a candle refers to the cremation, and the rock revealed after burning refers to the body return to nature.
Part II (Bone) 2023
Looking back to the photos of the ashes after cremation, the bones look so clean with some crystallized material with light colour. In Buddhism, there is a word for those crystal called Sarira, which only for those who have achieved great achievements in the practice of orthodox Buddhism. I am not a Buddhism, but my grandmother was. So I still believe the power of the religion. In this series I worked with the Chinese medicine - Goji berry. It is a very common Chinese medicine that I can even found it in the supermarket in London. This “westernized” eastern food make me think about the link between goji berry and Sarira, and the link between culture backgrounds.
Part III (Final) 2023
To avoid damage to the body due to excessive sadness, the brain secretes endorphins, which have effects and pleasure similar to opium. The Final draws attention on lightness: light in weight, light in colour and light in emotion. In this series, I used mineral colour paint as it gives an exquisite texture of the original mineral. It can be powder or granule, and some gives a pleasing shine under the sun. Mineral paint is not only about colour, but also about the material itself. It directly brings nature onto the canvas, expressing emotional impulses in one of the most primitive ways of human creations.
