Flicked

Tong Wenmin, Flicked, Performance Art,

Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China

Single channel video (color, sound)

2’50”, 2023.

Piece Description

Flicked is part of a long-term project From South to North Project that the artist has been working on for the past three years. One of this project’s earliest iterations was Chongqing Weeds as an early work of Tong Wenmin’s ‘Ruins Project’.

The ‘Ruins Project’, which began in 2018, focuses on the various ruins that are prevalent in cities, and through extensive fieldwork and research, the artist addresses diverse subjects including nature, architecture, memory, consumption, as well as literary and emotional space. Unlike adopting ruins as historical relics, this project is concerned with byproducts engendered from temporary ruins of urbanization.

Painted Sketch for Archive of Botanical Specimens (Sketch)

Tong Wenmin,

Acrylic paint over photograph printed on paper

130 cm x 80 cm, 2020.

In Chongqing Weeds, Tong zooms in on specific and commonplace weeds in Chongqing’s ruins, carefully identifying and categorizing their species and names, before attributing values to these insignificant individual beings.

She then paints their forms and figures in equal ratio onto the clay, and writes down their detailed location, traits, and characteristics in an encyclopedic fashion. Finally, these clay tablets are placed in a kiln at 1300 degrees, becoming fragile yet non-degradable clay plates.

The artist adopts an irreversible approach of erecting each weed on a ceramic slab into lasting but fragile miniature monument.

In 2022, the artist spent a year collecting plants in Chongqing and Yunnan, among other places, and pressed them into specimens. She placed the plant specimens on her body, so that the sun would tan their images onto her skin.

Chongqing Weeds

Tong Wenmin,

(Section of large-scale installation)

Underglaze on Ceramic, 2021-present

The artist then completed a series of outdoors performance artworks in Xishuangbanna, one of which is the performance video Flicked which we exhibit here for audiences so that viewers may gain a glimpse of the long evolution of the artist’s From South to North project.

If one looks closely, one can see how the skin of the artist’s body is tattooed from the process described above of placing plant specimens on her body, so that the sun would tan their images onto her skin.

Every time, the plant was placed back in its original location and then exposed to the sun for around 5 hours per day for 19 days. She continued this process for more than two months.

Yan Er Lu Art International

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