Social Sculpture (2025), Performance & Interactive Installation; 40min; colored lights, yarn (4 sets, 5m each), scissors, flower bunches, comic book pages (coverless), mylar sheets, 72-color eyeshadow compact with brushes, ice cubes, pocket camera; 4m x 4m x 2m; Toronto, Canada
Artist's Statement
The work explores interpersonal connection through a 40-minute participatory experience where I act as facilitator rather than director, providing instructions and objects that encourage non-verbal interaction.
Also by forbidding speech, the performance intends to dismantles conventional social barriers between strangers, allowing participants to rely on other senses-touch (ice cubes), sight (eyeshadow, mylar reflections), smell (flowers), and sound (mylar): while physically connecting through materials like yarn.
As participants gradually become part of a collective sculpture, the work embodies my broader artistic interest: taking subjective life, communal experience, and dynamic social environments as art's subject, rather than isolated objects removed from daily life.
Documentation video 8-min edited version: https://youtu.be/b48fqK70xYg
Description of the performanceThe process starts with asking 6-10 people including the artist to sit in a circle in darkness. The only instruction forbids verbal or language communication (excluding singing or making other sounds), and the participants will be asked to do anything within the 40-minute performance. In an order with several minutes of interval, I, the artist, will be picking up a series of objects that were prepared ahead of time and doing a series of actions:
1. Turn on the light source.
2. Tangle the participants randomly using the yarn and handing the rest of the yarn and the scissor to a random participant, and do a gesture of "please keep going" (palm facing up and pointed at the direction of my movement).
3. Similarly, hand two flowers to two participants, and then hand the rest of the flowers to another participant.
4. Hand two ice cubes to two participants, and then hand the rest of the ice cubes to another participant.
5. Hand the comic book to a random participant.
6. Cut the mylar sheet into stripes and tangle them around participants, and hand the rest of the sheet and the scissor to a random participant. Later, hand the other sheet of whole mylar sheet to another participant.
7. Using the eyeshadow compact, draw random patterns over some participants' face (waited a bit in the gesture of holding up the brush, so that if the participants show any expression of refusal, go to another participant), and then hand the eyeshadow set and the brush to a participant.
8. Start documentation of the process using a video camera. (Another camera over a tripod was set prior to the start of this process, but unfortunately the camera unexpectedly stopped recording after eighteen minutes.)
1. Turn on the light source.
2. Tangle the participants randomly using the yarn and handing the rest of the yarn and the scissor to a random participant, and do a gesture of "please keep going" (palm facing up and pointed at the direction of my movement).
3. Similarly, hand two flowers to two participants, and then hand the rest of the flowers to another participant.
4. Hand two ice cubes to two participants, and then hand the rest of the ice cubes to another participant.
5. Hand the comic book to a random participant.
6. Cut the mylar sheet into stripes and tangle them around participants, and hand the rest of the sheet and the scissor to a random participant. Later, hand the other sheet of whole mylar sheet to another participant.
7. Using the eyeshadow compact, draw random patterns over some participants' face (waited a bit in the gesture of holding up the brush, so that if the participants show any expression of refusal, go to another participant), and then hand the eyeshadow set and the brush to a participant.
8. Start documentation of the process using a video camera. (Another camera over a tripod was set prior to the start of this process, but unfortunately the camera unexpectedly stopped recording after eighteen minutes.)
Participants’ actions and feedbacks
A few participants really enjoyed the process while one of them took a nap. Two participants specifically told me that they liked the instruction that forbids verbal communication as that “got rid of the unnecessary part of interactivity and started straight into it”.
They generally thought of it as a playful activity off from their phone and got relaxed, and they made quite a lot of creative objects including:
- A ladder made by branch part of the flowers and yarn.
- A “boat” made by the comic book page with petals on it.
- Flowers were inserted all over someone’s hair.
- A “vessel” made by two yarn sets.
- A few orgami, including a paper crane.
- A flower’s petals were painted by eyeshadow colors.
A few participants really enjoyed the process while one of them took a nap. Two participants specifically told me that they liked the instruction that forbids verbal communication as that “got rid of the unnecessary part of interactivity and started straight into it”.
They generally thought of it as a playful activity off from their phone and got relaxed, and they made quite a lot of creative objects including:
- A ladder made by branch part of the flowers and yarn.
- A “boat” made by the comic book page with petals on it.
- Flowers were inserted all over someone’s hair.
- A “vessel” made by two yarn sets.
- A few orgami, including a paper crane.
- A flower’s petals were painted by eyeshadow colors.
The next iteration of this project continues here...
Process documentation: a trial before this performance takes place