To Find a Way Home

To Find a Way Home is a pair of sculptures made for the 9th Jing’an International Sculpture Project in Shanghai. The two works are close to one another in scale and image, and hold a near-and-far relationship with the viewer’s body, like two presences sensing each other in space and keeping up a slow, intimate exchange in stillness. The larger one begins with a pregnant belly, from which forms like coral, octopus tentacles or branching trees grow, drifting in an unnamed zone between body, plant and sea creature, as if a life force keeps pushing the body beyond its edges. The smaller one rests a form like brain coral on a cast bronze child’s foot, recalling the borrowed shell of a hermit crab: carrying, sheltering, living together.

Between the two works there is not only a formal echo but a quiet kinship. In the family atmosphere of the sculpture park they mirror each other like two stages of life side by side: intimate yet independent, interdependent yet each growing in its own direction. No longer single objects, they become presences sharing the same ground, slowly revealing, as they look at one another, a sense of growth, care and companionship.