We Are A Community

The interactive installation features numerous transparent plastic strips hung on fish wires that are pinned to the wall, with texts written in fluorescent ink. I interact with the installation by moving through the space, allowing my body to naturally bump into the fish wires, altering the setup. Audience members are given UV lights and flashlights to explore the space in any way they choose, and they are invited to write their own text strips using tools provided at a station beside the installation. The existing text prompts addressing personal and often societal insecurities across all ages, such as 'Do you have too much fat on your belly and legs?' and 'Will you be jobless next month?'

 

 

This work aims to deconstruct and reshape the concept of community, shifting its definition from the traditional understanding to include the people we see and interact with every day as a 'community’ as viewers who are in that physical space interacting with the artwork and me forms a community It suggests that the support, trust, care, connection, and inclusion we associate with members of a community should be extended to those we physically interact with daily. These individuals should form our most intimate community. When a community emphasizes inclusion for its members, it inevitably imposes exclusion on those outside of it, which can contribute to modern societal alienation. However, this work does not aim to criticize the existing definition of community. Instead, it seeks to remind viewers of the imperceptible consequences of an extreme focus on communities, which can suppress real, physical interactions and intimacy by prioritizing abstract characteristics that define a community.

 

I also act as an 'initiator' of such a community, as not every group of people can be considered a community—there must be an intentional formation. I collect people’s sources of stress and 'tear them up,' thereby initiating a basic form of support, inclusion, and connection, with the hope of receiving some of it in return.