Breathing soil

2023｜ Local soil from Madou, Tainan, Taiwan, Xuan paper ｜ W 1178 cm x H 396 cm

This work is composed of 29 large sheets of Xuan paper, each carrying soil that I collected in Tainan. In everyday life, we rarely pay close attention to soil, and we often look at it from a “top-down” perspective. Yet no matter how our lives or technologies change, one thing remains constant: we depend on soil to live. Food comes from the soil, and so the environments we inhabit and the cultures we build are ultimately supported by it.

In this work, I use Xuan paper to hold and lift the soil to the level of the viewer’s gaze, sometimes even higher, in order to shift the way we look at it. I hope the viewer encounters the soil through the body and the senses, rather than only through knowledge. We cannot personally experience every environment or life condition, but art can offer another way of approaching and perceiving them.

As viewers move through the work, the air, scale, and light shape a bodily experience that may feel like being “underground,” surrounded by soil. Through this experience, I hope to remind us that soil is not merely a backdrop, but something intimately and continuously connected to our bodies and our lives.