"On The Propensity To Do Harm"
// BLURB //
It begins small, like a ripple beneath dark water, almost imperceptible. A single tentacle unfurls, not in malice, but in instinct, reaching, grasping, searching for what it cannot name. It brushes past coral, stirs the silt, unsettles what lay hidden. And there it is: the mess, the chaos, the unintended ruin left in the wake of touch. We like to call it “cleaning” when we disrupt, as though scrubbing away the grime absolves the hand that caused it. The mop, the brush, the neat little circles were meant to restore order. Yet order itself is a kind of violence, wiping away one story to make room for another. Perhaps the creature beneath the waves does not know it harms. Perhaps its reach is nothing more than survival, a dance of movement and need. But on the surface, we watch from above, certain of our judgment, labeling it monstrous because it disturbs what we wanted to keep still.
It begins small, like a ripple beneath dark water, almost imperceptible. A single tentacle unfurls, not in malice, but in instinct, reaching, grasping, searching for what it cannot name. It brushes past coral, stirs the silt, unsettles what lay hidden. And there it is: the mess, the chaos, the unintended ruin left in the wake of touch. We like to call it “cleaning” when we disrupt, as though scrubbing away the grime absolves the hand that caused it. The mop, the brush, the neat little circles were meant to restore order. Yet order itself is a kind of violence, wiping away one story to make room for another. Perhaps the creature beneath the waves does not know it harms. Perhaps its reach is nothing more than survival, a dance of movement and need. But on the surface, we watch from above, certain of our judgment, labeling it monstrous because it disturbs what we wanted to keep still.
And so, the water is clouded, the floor scrubbed raw, and the tentacle curls back into the dark. Harm, after all, is never in the gesture alone, but in how we choose to see it.
EDITION, MEDIA, SIZE & WEIGHT
One-of-a-kind work, issued as a unique edition
Shanghai 2025
RGB LED display, acrylic painting on Plexiglass, Chinese ink on Vietnamese linen embedded in hand cast resin, teakwood frame
120(W)×120(H)×5.5(D) cm // 46 kg
CRATE SIZE & WEIGHT
132(W)×132(H)×21(D) cm // 86.9 kg
EXPOSURE
“Yaoguai” at island6 Shanghai
CREDITS
Yang Suer 杨素儿 (performance) • Wang Chuanwen 王传文 (painting) • Shengqiu Li 李生秋 (calligraphy) • Helen Chen 陈韵涵 (art direction) • Thomas Charvériat (art direction) • Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁 (production supervisor) • Tiara Alvarado-Leon (blurb)
One-of-a-kind work, issued as a unique edition
Shanghai 2025
RGB LED display, acrylic painting on Plexiglass, Chinese ink on Vietnamese linen embedded in hand cast resin, teakwood frame
120(W)×120(H)×5.5(D) cm // 46 kg
CRATE SIZE & WEIGHT
132(W)×132(H)×21(D) cm // 86.9 kg
EXPOSURE
“Yaoguai” at island6 Shanghai
CREDITS
Yang Suer 杨素儿 (performance) • Wang Chuanwen 王传文 (painting) • Shengqiu Li 李生秋 (calligraphy) • Helen Chen 陈韵涵 (art direction) • Thomas Charvériat (art direction) • Yeung Sin Ching 杨倩菁 (production supervisor) • Tiara Alvarado-Leon (blurb)
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