This sculpture installation is currently in progress. The figure, recently cast in aluminum, forms the core of the work but is not intended to remain exposed. It will be enclosed within a stone-like shell—a Gongshi (供石), also known as a scholar's rock in Chinese culture. These naturally weathered stones, prized for their asymmetry, texture, and evocative presence, have historically been appreciated as microcosms of the universe, inviting contemplation and spiritual resonance.
Rather than a traditional stone, my Gongshi will be constructed from fragments of skin-like parchment: Klaf (קלף), a material significant in Jewish tradition. Klaf refers to the specially prepared parchment made from animal hide, traditionally used for sacred texts such as Torah scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzot. Its status as both a surface of inscription and a container of meaning resonates deeply with the duality of concealment and revelation in this work.
Enclosed within the parchment Gongshi, the aluminum figure will be almost entirely hidden. Yet, the skin-stone will be pierced by thousands of minute perforations. These punctures will allow glimpses of the sculpture inside, painted with a white phosphorescent pigment. At night, light escaping through the holes will create a shimmering, voxel-like effect, appearing as if the figure is dissolving into, or materializing from, the surrounding air—a dematerialization that plays with presence and absence, solidity and ephemerality.
In addition to the countless pinholes, nine larger orifices will correspond to the nine traditional openings of the human body. Each orifice will be blocked by a cicada, referencing the ancient Chinese chu lü (蠹蝼) or jade cicada traditionally placed in the mouths of the deceased. The cicada, symbolizing rebirth and immortality, seals these openings, creating a dialogue between silence, transformation, and ritualized passage.
Once the sculpture is complete, it will be transported to the jungles of Shantou, in southern China, and suspended for several days. There, I will record a 24-hour video using a FLIR thermal camera. This technology captures the invisible dance of heat, rendering the contours of bodies and environments as isothermal curves—revealing a hidden layer of communication between the sculpture and its living surroundings. The thermal recording will not just document the presence of the sculpture but will visualize its energetic exchange with the jungle flora, evoking a sense of porousness between animate and inanimate, human and environment.
This piece is, at its core, about enclosures and permeabilities: the envelopment of body within stone, text within skin, and, ultimately, human gesture within the vast cycles of nature. It draws from the rituals and symbolisms of both Chinese and Jewish traditions, weaving them into a contemporary meditation on mortality, memory, and material transformation.
''Lifeline '' is a series of drawings executed on קלף (klaf, Hebrew: parchment), the material traditionally prepared by סופר סת"ם (sofer stam, scribe of sacred texts) for the inscription of Torah scrolls and other ritual writings. This substrate—imbued with corporeal and spiritual resonance—becomes a site for meditating on vitality, materiality, and projection. The works depict 供石 (gōngshí, Chinese: scholar’s rocks), long prized as aesthetic objects and, crucially, as cognitive instruments. Like Hermann Rorschach’s inkblots, gōngshí operate as ambiguous, generative forms onto which the scholar projects thought, serving as catalysts for imaginative exploration.
In ''Lifeline '', this meditative stone is not merely represented but anatomized: its silhouette is traversed by intricately drawn networks of capillary-like micro-arteries. Crucially, these vascular motifs extend across the parchment itself, reinscribing the klaf’s own historical role as once-living skin. This visual suturing of stone and body forges a symbolic continuum between mineral stasis and biological flow, positing the scholar’s stone as a surrogate body a resonant matrix where lifeblood and thought are entwined. The capillary tracings thus highlight not only the gonshi’s imaginative function but also the latent vitality of the parchment’s own materiality.
By conjoining the Judaic tradition of sacred inscription with the Sino-Daoist tradition of contemplative objects infused with qi (vital energy), Lifeline articulates a trans-cultural poetics of circulation. The series proposes that ink, blood, and qi are facets of a unified life-flow, a continuous circuit in which matter and spirit are co-constitutive. The work resonates with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the intertwining of flesh and world, and with new materialist theories of vital matter, suggesting that the imaginative act itself is corporeally grounded. Through the meticulous drawing of lifelines capillaries that traverse both stone and parchment the series reanimates inert matter, enacting a dynamic systole and diastole of perception.
