adazwork26@gmail.com
@adandan0520
I use water, body, and public participation to trace my own Chinese-ness through longing, loss, and circulation.
I grew up where rivers meet in Chongqing, China,
and now live in Brooklyn
adazwork26@gmail.com
@adandan0520
I use water, body, and public participation to trace my own Chinese-ness through longing, loss, and circulation.
I grew up where rivers meet in Chongqing, China,
and now live in Brooklyn
Mamoru Oshii asked: if you replace every part of the body, what remains?
I'm asking: if you replace every part of my Chinese-ness, what remains?
A man from Fuzhou opens a restaurant in Chinatown.
He cooks the way a Taiwanese immigrant taught him.
He buys his ingredients from a Mexican wholesaler.
His customers are 2nd-gen Fuzhou kids and white tourists.
The speakers are playing Mandopop from 2005.
Is the food on the plate still Chinese?
Am I still Chinese?
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But here is what the shore forgot.
For thousands years we have treated the body as interfaces.
We lit fire on the body to pull out blood.
We push metal needles into skin to reroute the Qi.
We locked jade bangles onto wrists let baby grow around it.
The body is the interface, mutation is the method.
The cyborg is not a future I’m entering.
It is a method I’m returning to.
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Wet Market takes the term the West was taught to fear and turns it back into ours.
It began as images — wet market I shot across cities during trips back home.
It grew into spaces — a blood room hidden inside my closet, a pink light meat stall station sailing across NYC’s most creative places
Then into objects
A fan becomes an extension of the body.
A mussel shell becomes a wormhole to distant patch of sea.
A nipple becomes a confession room.
It asks what stays Chinese when every part has been cut apart — maybe nothing stays, or maybe that is the most Chinese thing of all — to be cut apart, and keep sailing
The Objects
Fan Service is a fan made to be worn, not held. Each comes with two chains, so it hangs from the body instead of the hand. An NFC version lets you tap phones to trade socials with a stranger.
Origin of Life is a wearable poem, handmade using mussels collected from Baker Beach, San Francisco. Inside each one is a NFC chip,tap it with a phone and a poem appears. Twice a day, when the tide in San Francisco reaches its highest point, the poem is washed away.
Soft Offering is a lamp in the shape of a plain white bun, cradled in the arms of a chrome-silver octopus hand pierced at the top.
- BAM(Brooklyn Academy of Music)
- Mood Ring
- Verci NYC
- Elsewhere
- Beverly’s
- Accent Sister
The Gallery