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Helen Jiayu Zhang

  1. The Metaphor of Sand
  2. Like Air for Breath Exhibition
  3. World Body Mind
  4. The Unfamiliar Body
  5. En dedans-Giselle
  6. Future Unknown Exhibition
  7. Graphing Ballet
  8. Improvising Ballet
  9. The Empty “pagex”
  10. Sip
  11. L-L
  12. Don’t Touch My Body

Writings

︎︎︎helenjiayuzhang@gmail.com ︎︎︎zhangjiayu0829@126.com
@helen_jzhang
are.na/helen-zhang/my-fooood
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The Metaphor of Sand: Walking, Watching, and Witnessing

Installation/Video/Performance
18:02:00
Breathing, walking, watching, and touching are bodily actions that seem increasingly distant from our current life. Unconscious physical movements and unobserved fantasies are both intuitive and passively generated habitual ways of understanding the world. Through interaction with the world, we acquire knowledge and second-hand information.
Direct perception of the body is often overlooked, and the consciousness generated through physical observation is rarely emphasized. This exhibition provides clues for the body and mind to re-connect. Audiences’ physical manipulation and illusion in minds during the interaction within the space is the witness and definition of the artwork itself.
The sand, as a sculptural object, fills the space. As an interactive object within the space, its definition and context change based on the audience's experience. The stone symbolizes eternity, a magnified form of a grain of sand. It serves as a tool to draw, a chair, a sculpture, a ritual, an object imbued with human touch and cultural significance, or something that is undefined and beyond its original function.
The stone appears in the video across three sites: the beach, a construction site, and a stone bridge, connecting the objects within the space, thereby breaking the fourth wall.