What if 'Einmal ist Keinmal'
Huixian Huang 's artistic practice focuses on the relationship between time condition and the continuous changing in the perception of time from individual perspective. Her work incorporates various mediums, including geometric and figurative sculptures, natural found-objects and photographs. All those creates a certain kind of poetic, day-dreaming atmosphere to invite viewers to join the site-specific immersion of wide-ranging imagination.
She considers the physical changing of the human body as a way of life-consuming, which can be regarded as a passive way to reflect on the time. Moreover, under the circumstances that life is temporal duration, the human body can be somehow seen as a common advantage. Since those feelings and experience are built upon the flesh and blood, which is the only form all humans share, people can share their life experience, emotional connection, empathy and understandings from their perspective when they learned a certain kind of realisation from the bliss and poignancy, happiness and pain, life and death in daily life. It makes people feel, in a way, permanently connected with a certain day or specific moment. This is the active way that people perceive the time from their own life.
At the current stage, the artist attempts to employ the rhythm of the seasons as a conceptual structure to build several specific sites with symbolic narrative, aiming to explore the possibilities that human body can physically and emotionally develop under the changing circumstances led by time and natural laws. Her work applies the aesthetic of symbolism expression from novels, poems and films to arrange a series of metaphorical elements, with the on-site experience, inspiring viewers a kind of awareness of the embedded temporal and wasting in human body and knowledge of human’s innate receptivity to the regularity in the succession of days and nights, life and death.
'The Swinging of February' ; Wood, egg shell, tights, cotton, paper, crystal; 5 x 80 x 245 cm, 2020
'Little Graves of Memory' ; Wax, food coloring, wicks; Dimensions variable, 2020
'Little Graves of Memory' (detail 1) ; Wax, coloring, wicks; 16 x 19.2 x 5 cm, 2020
'Little Graves of Memory' (detail 2) ; Wax, coloring, wicks; 13.6 x 17 x 5 cm, 2020
'Little Graves of Memory' (detail 3) ; Wax, coloring, wicks; 13.6 x 13.6 x 7.5 cm, 2020
'Little Graves of Memory' (detail 4) ; Wax, coloring, wicks; 8 x 11.2 x 5 cm, 2020
'Tiny Scenery' ; Paper, instant film, fabric, salt; Dimensions variable, 2020
'Tangible Moments: Richmond Park'; 7.3 x 8.6 x 1 cm, 2020
'Tangible Moments : Coincidence'; 7.3 x 8.6 x 3 cm, 2020
'Tangible Moments : A Dark Tree'; 7.3 x 8.6 x 1 cm, 2020
'Untitiled'; 16 x 16 x 18.5 cm, 2020
Works under lockdown
During this period, everything seems to become simpler and slower. But things are not getting easier. I would say the lockdown life is more like a mind journal when I slow my pace down. So it gives me more spare time to spend with my own self and the ideas always reflect on the passage of time. Those daily objects, as normal life' signs or symbols, started to make me feel more distant than ever before. That could be a new experience either from my individual perspective or a collective one.
Those fragments from my past life started to float in blankness, slightly and slowly
I miss cats on the street, croissants in Lidl, vintage markets in Camden Town, and my normal daily life.
And also, I have realised that other's company has become more important and fulfilling than ever before the long isolation.
“Time is the substance I am made of.
Time is a river which sweeps me along,
but I am the river;
it is a tiger which destroys me,
but I am the tiger;
it is a fire which consumes me,
but I am the fire.”
- Jorge Luis Borges “A New Refutation of Time”
This is a tree standing in Theo Angelopoulos' night, weeping and roaring
At least I see so
This is a tree with passive-aggressive strength to fight against the blankness
At least I see so
This is a tree knowing something about 'Einmal ist Keinmal' and refuting it 'Keinmal ist Einmal'
At least I see so
This is a dialogue between me and the tree
At least I see so