Located between the coasts of Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai, the new Hangzhou Bay area is right on the fertile soil of the cradle of Neolithic civilization in the lower Yangtze River basin in China 7,000 years ago, close to the sites of Hemudu, Liangzhu and Qianshanyang. From the excavation of 40,000 square meters of ruins of the Hemudu culture with four stacked layers, ivory carving goblets, pottery shards and moth-shaped vessels with wriggling silkworm patterns carved on the surface were found. In the Liangzhu and Qianshanyang sites, textile tools and silk weaving fragments of that period were excavated. In addition, an amount of the world’s earliest paddy, husk, dried rice and the remains of stilt structure with mortise and tenon was also unearthed from Hemudu. Looking up at the starlight of the ancient civilization, I got so much inspiration. In 2016, China’s “Shenzhou XI” let six silkworms spit silk in the Heavenly Palace, completing the space silkworm experiment, resulting in five silkworms made cocoons... In 2018, “Chang’e IV” took six species of organisms such as cotton, rape and potatoes as samples to the Moon, performing a legend of life in space... With the flight of thought, the creative idea of Crossing was born.

The structure of the work consists of three main parts: the “seed” sculpture made of silk spitting by the silkworm; the transparent accelerators holding together in a round shape with silk traces in it (the round shape also metaphorically refers to the sky); and the exhibition hall designed with the features of the stilt structure as a soaring flying machine. The three are presented in a dark space, as if “the night is quiet and the sky is far away”. As the structure of the silk trail spit by silkworms is in the shape of “8”, it will produce a mysterious phenomenon of refraction, when the viewer steps into the room and moves slowly around along the silk-lighted round wall, he will find that the constant outward diffusion of the quivering silk halo changes silently as he moves, as if he is touring in the space. It is like: the silkworm of space is distant from us, the silk light shimmers indistinctly, scattering shadow for miles, like clouds and waves. The spaceship is whizzing by, sowing the seeds in the sky, real and illusory at the same time, in this vast and bleak space.

March 28, 2020