Mother Nature

Mother Nature is a project that integrates moving image and sculptural installation. In the video, I pluck strands of white hair from his mother’s head, an intimate gesture that forms the narrative core of the piece. This act, oscillating between affection and consolation, simultaneously reveals the mother’s fear of aging and the latent tension of silence and secrecy within the private sphere of the mother–son relationship. The extracted hair is affixed onto the mother’s hairpin and a withered orchid, congealing into a fragile yet perilous sculpture. The entanglement of the flower’s residual form with the claw-like structure of the hairpin produces a hybrid creature, both beautiful and melancholic. Through this microscopic scene of intimacy, the work exposes the intertwined dynamics of body, memory, and intergenerational emotion, while pointing to the quiet negotiations and latent queer struggles embedded within familial relations shaped by specific cultural and social conditions in mainland China, where “Mother Nature” names not care or origin, but a mechanism through which aging, obedience, and queer silence are naturalized within the family.

Image Stills & Exhibitions  From Mother Nature, 2022