Xuetong Feng

People assign memories and emotions to objects and incidents to confirm their own identity and existence. This is how we recognise and connect with ourselves in the past. If we don’t confirm our existence in this way, we will not be able to connect with anything in the world. Without proof of self-existence, life will become meaningless, the environment and society will become chaotic and disorderly, and each day will be just a copy of the previous day.

I've always believed in this theory and embedded it in my work. My practice explores the reconstruction of cultural identities in the process of mobility and rupture by exploring individual and collective memories. I especially focused on the confusion of identity that I experienced as a Chinese in cross-cultural contexts. Taking physical experience as a starting point, I often break the fixed structure and rules of arrangement in material, language or space to reflect the fluid state of identity perception. The boundary between the natural and the man-made is an essential issue in my work; I continued to explore the coexistence between structures such as plant growth and architectural debris. My works usually involves paintings, installations, videos and photographs, attempting to build a mobile, non-linear way of viewing at the intersection of the material and the spiritual.