Jacqueline Qiu

This installation of gathered writing from my peers expresses the potential of a weightless diasporic experience, recording varied sentiments and degrees of familiarity with Chinese.

It brings the outside in, each thought billowing upward, riding the wind in different directions and clusters. As the viewer looks up to read, it imparts an embodied sense of wonder and inquisitiveness through movement, making one think of their body in a landscape.

“Good paper lasts hundreds of years, surviving the ravages of time, weather, and insects.

At the same time it is ephemeral.

When burnt, paper’s essence twists up in a wreath of smoke, dances on the ether, and becomes air.

When floated off on a river, the paper slowly dissolves and becomes water.

The ease with which paper can be burned

or dissolved

[lends it to] physical transformations which represent ritual movements across spirit thresholds.”

Quote from Meditations at the Edge: Paper and Spirit by Dorothy Field