This work is part of the installation "my playbench in the workground." This work is a reimagination of the origin of a Euclidean space. Usually denoted by the letter O, the origin point is used as a fixed point of reference for the geometry of the surrounding space. This work uses a playful sculptural language to critique the arbitrariness of norms, standards, rules, regulations, and ideologies imposed on our daily life and to question the power relations associated with the standardization.

O(0,0,0,0)

This work is part of the installation “my playbench in the workground.” This work comes from the “axe before entering” TV trope. During the exhibition, the kinetic concrete Maneki-Neko constantly knocks on the door gently while an axe is placed leaning against the door. Through a cartoonish depiction of the usually super violent trespass scene, this work contemplates the differences between the use of tools in our daily life and that in mass media, the gap between the actual and the representational, and the complex relationship between desire and violence. 

“then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff.” 

This work is part of the installation my playbench in the workground. This sculpture combines a shovel and a seesaw based on their similar movements when played, used, or activated by human bodies. This combination creates a "play-labor" object that reflects and contemplates the motivations, meanings, and implications behind the increasingly blurred boundaries between play and labor in our contemporary life.

In this installation, the use of wood patterns printed on clear acetate and attached to the actual wood blocks is inspired by the 3D rendering and bit mapping techniques in the digital software. The clips used to attach these fake patterns to the wood are created by that combining the designs of the wood clip, the screw/bolt, and the game console. There are three different designs of clip used in the installation: the d-pad clip, the ABXY-pad clip, and the joystick clip.

see shovel saw

In this project, I replicate existing columns in a renovated industrial space and put one of the replicants on the top of a modified power-wheels, which allows the copy column to move around the original one. This pair then forms a duo, trapping their “prey” in the middle of the copy’s tracks. Inspired by the cat-and-mouse scenario from cartoon animations, I reinterpret this scenario and apply it to the architectural elements to contemplate the perpetual power wrestling and agency exchange between our bodies and the constructed space around us. 

Cheese Column

This project is an installation consisting of seven sculptures. These sculptures come from reinterpretations of different tools I have encountered or used in my studio, my apartment, the life simulation video games I play, the animations I watch, and the internet in general. These tools come from both the contexts of play/leisure and those of labor/work. In a way, these works form a new set of tools that help me to construct my personal ontology of the renewed relationship between play and labor in our contemporary life where the boundaries between these two activities are increasingly blurred. This body of works is also my way to identify my body, position, and agency in today’s context where the digital and the physical converge, the virtual and the real meet, play and labor merge, and fiction and fact collide.

Add

Huidi Xiang