We Exist Here (2014)

Material: Metal wire, speaker with sound,pile of paper with text.

Location: E6/Meridian Space, Beijing, China.

This project was realized while I was in a residency in Beijing in a group exhibition called ‘In-Between You and Me’.

A deconstructed world map was made with metal wire placed on floor in the centre of the four columns. The intention was to open up the peripheries of each continent and create a large circular territory that holds no relation to a world map as we know it. That was exactly the point - to look at world map not as we see it on maps but rather a more inclusive sense of territory. I opened up the peripheries of each continent and joined them together. What kind of enclosure of territory is generated if the existing territories are diminished and forms a complete whole?

At the centre of the new formed territory is a speaker with a voice of a man speaking in English and a woman speaking in Chinese, narrating a passage from Beryl Markham’s novel, West with the Night. Beryl Merkham was the first woman pilot to fly in the transatlantic route circa 1920. The passage talks about the idea of maps as a psychological construct. The wall opposite the installation holds the sentence ‘We Exist Here’ with its Chinese translation.