Artist's Book Ground Sea

This photography collection is divided into two parts. The first part, "Sun-Set Watchers," uses black-and-white portraits of three women re-enacting a fantastical folktale from the 1896 Japanese tsunami to allude to the anxious premonitions of those suffering from depression, interspersed with color photographs to evoke the artist's bodily memories of being bedridden. The second part, "Kuafu Chasing the Sun," features still images from two video works, documenting the artist's father's life after retiring from the Chinese People's Liberation Army ten years after his daughter left home. In these images, his body is constantly propelled forward by the gears of the system, breaking the stasis of the previous section, only to ultimately fall into nothingness. The author, Peng, likens the depressed body to a receiver that amplifies future signals, much like the camera in her hands. Between the tension of stillness and movement, waiting and chasing, she poses a question: Is it those who are paralyzed by witnessing impending disaster who need treatment, or is it this society, numb from its blind pursuit of progress, that truly needs to be awakened?