Special Materials

Revolving around the effect of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on my family, this project visualizes a “monologue” constantly going on between all times, people, and materials, influencing generations of continual products of historical events.

“People made of special materials” is a phrase commonly used to promote the realization of self-fulfillment and self-sacrifice in the communist context. Revolving around the effect of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on my family history, this project is a visualization of a “monologue” constantly going on between all times, people, and materials, especially the single-sided conversation that is speaking to and influencing generations of continual products of historical events. Through the rehabilitation of old photographs and documents, this project aims to write out visually the unspeakable and sometimes invisible influence of these “historical monologues” and how these monologues are very much spoken with the purpose of communicating.

An installation has been made that not only serves as a storage for the nine image-documents but also a wooden sanctuary for the four representative figures in the “historical monologues”—my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and me. The conversation between times might seem effective through overlapping images and documents. However, between them, they are still two separate beings, at separate times, on different pages, while only the viewers can read and perceive the correlation. Yet, to perceive such similarity at all times would require involvement in the same ideological predicament. To exist within such a river of time, whether within the past, the present, or the future, we are always people made of special materials.