Scent-ing
Kuan-Ya Wu + Mary Evans, 2024, installation/video, paper mache clay, spray foam sealant, mix-media
Encountering our existence, one another we find ourselves, constantly on the search of self definition, of who we are and what we envision ourselves to become.
The sculptural structure by Kuan-Ya Wu served as a vessel of her in 2023 in transition to “adulthood” serving as one of the spare parts of the reality world. Her encounter with imposter syndrome had swollen her mind. Miscellaneous substance poured out from the restricted frame, out of control and drifting away from her idealism. We often looked into a mirror that reflected the surface reality, it was what we looked like but often not what we were satisfied with. As the mirrors lost the function of reflection in recording, Wu’s train of thoughts paused, it was then put to an end of the growing of insecurities. It stopped in time, awkwardly following the framework, but not brave enough to live outside it. She said, “Looking back in time, there might never be a moment where I find satisfaction in who I am, but how does that interfere with my identification as a complete human?”
Mary Evans’s collaged video are imagined visuals of nature and recordings of her search for the never-visited land. A piece of land inherited from her late father, the last keepsake she had, but was taken away. What was deprived was also the slipping fragments of her “father” in her memories. She wandered, finding images of dirt and land to fill out the blanks from the missing puzzle, to find control in what was lost.These unfitting pieces included plants on the sidewalk, unfinished construction sites, views on a road trip, random dirt in a tub of a stranger, the images found from “a pile of dirt” in search engines, and many more. The land can no longer be pictured in the way of ownership or connection. She looked at herself, the self that was still in search of “completion” while that absence became permanent. Her poem, Death and Oklahoma, written:
But when lard can be made to smell of lilacs
iron weed’s imitate
throated lilies, and
bluebells.
Owning dirt
Burning sulphur. Tabasco sauce. California.
In cool sterile glass jars.
Sitting side by side. Touch them lightly.
It had remained untouched
the bright blue flame
horizon was haze and grime
forget-me-nots daughter
Heart, brain, and placenta.
like a weeping cherry tree in form growing upside down
to allow the ivy roots to have been cut,
and fill it with another chemical.
But it has been doing
damage all along
Will it
become
really permanent.
