How the years comb out the texture of everything
7cm x 3cm x 0.5cm ebony comb 33 x 2.5cm x 18cm red camphor tree trunk Installed on a 200cm*150cm pond in Changsha
18th May 2021
This project examines the alienation of modernity through the lens of speed, addressing Paul Virilio’s assertion that accelerated technological advancement strips human beings of their internal time, leaving them in a dispossessed vacuum. To counter this post-human condition, the work adopts a non-anthropocentric expression of temporality. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s time consciousness and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, the project reduces cosmic and ecological phenomena to the pure experience of time. This perspective allows the observed subjects to find shelter, fostering an understanding of "being-in-the-world" and the harmonious movement of the fourfold: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals.
Within this framework, the existence of humanity is transformed into a state of invisibility and co-presence. This shift is mediated through the "comb," an artificial wooden tool that reveals the clarity of existentialism. The relationship between humanity and nature ceases to be one of conquest and subjugation. Instead, both entities participate in the continuous evolution of the universe and time. Through this mutual generation, they reclaim a long-lost wholeness, presenting the finely combed texture of the universe, nature, and the world directly to the viewer.