works

softly burning orbits

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curatorial statement + book

softly burning orbits, 2024.
Mineral Powder, Nanmu Powder, Soil, Clay, Wood, Canvas, Ginkgo Seeds

softly burning orbits repositions the nature of death while questioning sentience and remembrance through the context of trees and tree burials. The title of the work names an attempt to soften the process of death, drawing subtle stimulations to consider hindered aspects of the burial and memorial process: How might reframing death through the lens of trees enhance our living selves? How much autonomy should be given to the subject of death? Does considering the sentience of other entities clarify our position in the space between life and death?

Burning initiates with an allusion to death practices (burial, cremation, incense-burning). The implied fire further gestures towards the materiality of the clay. Orbit then frames death holistically within a circular entanglement between living, dying, and rebirth and links between metaphysical and scientific frameworks that position all sentient entities.

Comprising sculptures, a book, and a composite installation, the work plays with the relationship between trees, burials, and stakes. The sculptures are framed as a supposed stake atop the site of tree burials, where the tree sprouts and grows “freely” around or along the structure.

Through allusion to the functional purpose of tree stakes, the sculptures act as stakes, or non-stakes, that obscure the function of support versus obstacles — a metaphor for the extended sentience of living beings in a shared ecosystem and the structures that shape our perception and consciousness; the discourse then surrounds tangible and intangible support. The equivocal reference to stakes examines validation between the physical and metaphysical, questioning certain absurdity and significance of presupposed beliefs.