Twining the Underneath(2019)

(Reflect in 2022: Why I want to do this project? When I suffer from my body pain because of load of work and anxiety, I always traced back the therapy of moxibustion, which my mother always persuaded me to take when I was in China. It is always effective for some small problems. I found that not only means a traditional myth but a relation to the system I live in : After I move to Netherlands the body pain is the presentation of my immigrant situation: alienated relationships, cultural disconnection, homesickness, structural inequities… and I need to do more work to survive for residence. While the moxibustion embraces me by its anti-modernity manner: a gift from hometown, it requires the body to stop, rest, breath, sleep, dream, sweat. Do nothing but feeling the body. If we can learn form moxibustion, and develop it to be a broader practice that beyond my own history, what could it be?)

It is a fictional space derived from moxibustion, a folk Chinese therapy which heats up the body by burning the moxa above the surface of skin, thereby achieving a means of curing diseases. This therapy is based on the shamanic view that the body is a part of the universe, and the meridian theory that through stimulating the channels inside the body, the energy (Qi) is able to circulate to all parts of the body. 

I use the moxibustion resort as a model/place/vehicle for my artistic research, experiment and practice. The costumes activate portals between the stove of moxa, body and the space, and eliminate their boundaries bwteen each. The space emphasizes the inviting and permeable restoration of moxibuston, which cross the space and continent, so everything is connected and exchange each other

The space itself is an organism, a self-healing and detoxifying, introspective cavity. A space where the senses are activated.