Zixuan Hao

The cover of this series of postcards is made of a transparent material (e.g. tracing paper or film transparencies), with the pause symbol ‘||’ cut out in the centre as a perceptible ‘entrance to care’. The pause symbol is not only a visual marker, but also a ‘hollowed out gap’ - leading the viewer through it to the care objects at the bottom, creating a sensory suggestion of an ‘invitation to pause’ in the superimposition of layers and masking. The layers are overlaid and obscured to create the sensory suggestion of being ‘invited to pause’.

Through the pause skeleton, the viewer will see one of the 16 objects (such as candle, slippers, pen, etc.) on the back, each of which symbolises a different form of intervals of care in daily life, and each time the content of the postcard is changed, it is a reconfiguration of the pause imagery and the perception of the objects.

In the lower right corner of the cover, there are four tear-off corners with four pause states written on them. The viewer can select a state and remove the label at each moment of pause as a tangible, participatory declaration of pause. This interactive mechanism makes pause no longer an abstract symbol, but a physical and emotional behaviour that is perceived, decided and triggered.