Water Refuge

Water Refuge is a story of land-bound human explorers longing for ocean mother.

About Wei Weng and exhibition Water Refuge

Wei Weng (b. 1981 Nanning, China; based in Melbourne, Australia) received her MFA from California College of Arts (’05) in Painting. Her recent projects focus on the mechanism of cross-cultural experiences through interdisciplinary research and collaborative storytelling. Her first bilingual (CN/EN) publication Eat A Chili connects image production with sci-fi tales of thrill seeking behaviors. In her latest project Water Refuge, Wei Weng creates new fables based on Danish and Chinese literary concepts such as the little mermaid (Hans Anderson) and the Master Thief (Søren Kierkegaard), immortals (神仙) and utopia (桃花源), while using open sea swimming to visualize the rejuvenation power of cold water on human psyche, culminating in a series of cross- cultural events, photo book and exhibition design. Photographic images, assemblage objets and fable writing, these elements all contribute to an ethnographic interpretation of human's everlasting appetite to find utopia through a cold water world.

Water Refuge plays with the primal kinship that links the maker in her temporary home (Denmark 2018-2023) with material economy, her subject (swimmers), and the ethereal ocean mother. For two years, the artist operated between her home studio and urban waterside, documenting the ritual of open sea swimmers. On one hand, Weng collects materials from her own household waste and local market, transforming them by using traditional lacquer techniques such as egg shell inlay and fabric binding. On the other hand, she follows and engages the mental world of swimmers through a collaborative photographic process. In the end, Water Refuge is a story of land-bound human explorers longing for ocean mother.

About the artbook publication Water Refuge

A sequel to Wei Weng's first book Eat A Chili (2021), Water Refuge continues to explore the primal appetite for thrill-seeking via intense sensory experience. Weng's richly layered photographs and beguiling narrative are influenced by the Chinese and Danish literary worlds which have informed her multivalent practice, and now travelling from burning capsaicin spice to immerse readers in frigid northern sea landscapes, Water Refuge carries the coming of age story of Eat a Chili over the fluid cusp of time and spatial imagination.

A young man is startled by the sight of an ageing caretaker working below the sea, and the choice between Ocean Mother or the land-bound world becomes a matter of destiny.

Water Refuge

Self Published by Wei Weng

First Edition, June 2023

ISBN 978-87-972613-1-6

Book size: 180mm x 24mm

Page count: 162 pages

Booklet text: 20 pages