Domestic Chaos
Things make sense as the “sense” manipulates the intricate relationship between the information presented and past experience and education. As long as the sense finds a way to explain the information, absurdity could turn into reason.
This project rearranges everyday items in the artist’s apartment, such as sponges, cigarettes, candles, and vegetables. The items are seen too often to be paid attention to, but once combined in an unaccustomed way, they acquire a different sense of being. During the shooting period, the Chinese policy towards covid changed drastically — scientific facts become a tool for governance. The images examine the sense that operates upon the seemingly weird combinations of things, paralleling to the mental process of the people trying to makes sense of contradictory “explanation” of the pandemic. It is both an introspection of the self and an observation of the dynamic outside world.
The second part of the project is inspired by Wang Min-an’s book Domestic Spaces in Post-Mao China: On Electronic Household Appliances that discusses how domestic electronic appliances reshape the spatial power structure of modern household. By placing an image within an electronic appliance whose function is related, such as washing clothes, growing plants and storing food, the photographs build interaction between the images and their surroundings. The work blurs the boundary between natural and artificial, drawing attention to the evolving dynamic between human beings and machines.