Chun Shao

Artist Statement:

My work explores the poetics of distance between the physical and digital, personal and cultural, mundane and eccentric. The beauty of distance is represented by reserving an imaginary space that is fulfilled with fantasy, desire, and narrative; a place that can be explored and wandered; a point of view for reconciling with the past and envisioning the future. My recent works deliberate a complicated yet confusing mental state due to the post-pandemic situation. The concept of distance has been resembled by the feeling of uncertainty and the sensual experience of disembodiment. In my last solo exhibition, Riddle Bodies, I remodeled a historical apartment into a parafictional quarantine home. Combining traditional handcrafting techniques with electronic textile procedures, I transformed fabrics, synthetic wigs, and cosmetic supplies into sculptural forms performing skin-felt textures, mechanical movements, and sounding atmospheres. Visitors experienced a series of surreal scenes, uncanny-looking objects, or disorienting senses between reality and memory. Within this lonely yet artificially alive house, I created visual riddles as metaphors to refer to the collectiveness of global sadness.