We Are Ephemeral
Nomadic Residency, Mongolia
During the Nomadic Red Corner Residency in Mongolia (2025), I engaged in field-based artistic research which involves interacting with international and local art community, art history and cultural study, natural environment exploration, biomaterial experiment, culminating in a site-responsive ecological sculpture that was left to disintegrate in the landscape.
Dis/integrating Biomaterial: Wool
Emerging in my thoughts, guided by walks upon the steppe, are questions of composition and decomposition.
Here, I find animal fragments at varying stages of decomposition. A goat skull with horns and hair still attached; a disappearing skeleton surrounded by wild flowers; a handful of sun-bleached bones—dispersed; a shedding of wool left to disintegrate.
I collect wool from the steppe back to the ger…
With my hands, I start to process wool collected from the steppe.
Gradually—soil particles, plant debris and oily sections are removed. I divide the wool into 3 portions. Each is hand-spun clockwise into long strands of yarn with the help of a bone fragment also borrowed from the steppe. The 3 strands are braided together, forming a more stable composition.
The traditional technology of braiding is polygenetic and ancient, recorded in artifacts as early as the Bronze-age civilizations such as the Statue of Nykara and his Family (ca. 2455-2350 BCE) of Ancient Egypt(1), and the Dancing Girl (ca. 2500 BCE) of Indus Valley(2). Amongst these diverse cultures is a common thread of braiding hair, not only as adornment but also holding significant cultural, social and spiritual meanings.
Sources:
(1) Brooklyn Museum (www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/3544)
(2) National Museum, New Delhi (https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Museum-of-India)
Statue of Nykara and his Family (ca. 2455-2350 BCE)
Photos: Brooklyn Museum
Dancing Girl (ca. 2500 BCE)
Photos: National Museu, New Delhi
We Are Ephemeral
The following documentary photographs were shot on 35mm film and personally developed and printed in a darkroom, reflecting the project’s analogue approach.
Collecting wool from the steppe
We Are Ephemeral
2025
hand, animal bone fragment & wool
approx. 1.5m
We Are Ephemeral
2025
wool
approx. 1.5m
Ephemeral sculpture made in Mongolia, disintegrating installation documented on 35mm film
We Are Ephemeral is a site-responsive, disintegrating installation.
With my own hands, found biomaterial—wool—is transformed through traditional techniques into an ecological sculpture that is left to naturally disintegrate in the landscape. The ephemeral sculpture is fully biodegradable, requiring only energy input and no additional adhesives to hold its composition.
We Are Ephemeral is a dis/integration spiral.
“What happens if the chain of levels is not linear, but forms a loop? What is real, then, and what is fantasy?”(1) Consciousness is a ‘Strange Loop’—a recursive self-referential phenomenon in the form of a hierarchical spiral—a mathematical curve that emanates from a point moving farther away as it revolves around this point—heard in Bach’s music and seen in Escher’s drawings.
Passing through nature to eternity,
We Are Ephemeral.
Source:
(1) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1999)
This cultural exchange project was supported by The Hong Kong Arts Development Council. The Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.