The Heart of Refrain: My Practice and Territoriality

I work on the heart since I have always encountered heat shapes. Creating more heart-shaped works, I realize that the heart has always been a territory, and every creation of it is the identification of “I."


I have been "unproper" in many situations in my social life, unable to take those given things for granted: identities, consensus, values, and languages, living as a person of no belonging. I studied the philosophies of multi-personalities, micro-politics, territory theory, and the art of loving. I have decided on my life as an artist since I was 30 and realize that rejecting identity-belonging is for a veritable identity-belonging. Being in the details of everyday practices, ready to experiment.


The study on territory theory provides me with a reference. A territory is more conceptual; it is more meaningful than what its material is. For example, "home" places not only our bodies but also our body experiences, behaviours, emotions, and individual histories. When we return home, we return to the home of a more conceptual "home" than of a housing space. The conceptual "home" is conceptualized and territorialized by the "I" living here and, at the same time, expresses the subjectivity of "I." Any territorial thing does, from a circle drawn on the white paper or a sign marked on the tree: all the posters of "I." This also explains why we are nostalgic: It is our motherland, always our belongings.


This is the meaning of the heart. However, the heart is more micro and abstract, simultaneously macro and concrete. For its micro and abstract, it is usually used for an individual expression of statements, for example, "I love you;" it has no direct connection to the construction of social structures and does not engage in any specific parts of systematic operations. For its macro and concrete, the range of the heart is far broader than the ideological expressions and their byproducts of histories and powers, as can be seen in how it applies to entirely different countries, races, beliefs, and language communities; regarding ideologies and their byproducts that alienates people is itself abstract, people express the meaning of the heart in real and concrete events of everyday life. This talks about the politics of the heart (all the territorialized the political).


In my studio, I once again attempt to make heart-shaped works and write this heart manifesto.




Feng,
Feb, 2024