Wenyi Qian

Wenyi has the sensation of being a broken eel trapped in paraffin, and sometimes treats the red watermelon as part of her body. She finds inspiration for her own life by studying the patterns of other beings. She experiences growth as a bystander, silently observing the shaping of the outside world but treating her life as a part of the work. 

The construct of the imaginary will be central in revealing her practice. In ‘Red Container’ (2020), she converges with materials through the imagination, where she becomes the watermelon, and in turn generates a narrative out of this. The imagination is in the realm of illusion, potential, and images, while the image is still, and it attracts gestures into its orbit creating a flurry of movement. It is the series of transmutations of becoming, which is the bridge of producing form, but also its annihilation, setting up the tension of the play of invisible and visible forces which are woven into the event. As a process of becoming, in which the watermelon becomes the space that occupies my imaginary, test stops and everything fades by a slippage into nowhere. The process of becoming is not so much the space between events but the very possibility of the events occurring, so her relationship to performance resides within such a difference.

Then sense will be used as the politics of practice to before and beyond the signification, while materials are the guidance to let the process happens. She emerges with history, memory, and experience naturally in the new work ‘Monument’ (2022) by transferring sculpture into paintings. The text and lines float in the air to create the continuity of time.