“To be a land——
When thinking of land as a verb, she is alive.”
Han Yun Liang Solo Exhibition
2022.10.29—11.06
At Gallery Luce Giardino, Taipei (TW)
Going into nature is a way of balancing myself, just like walking is a conversation with my physical and spiritual selves. My experiencing of nature extends to my senses, body, and perception and reflection of the world.
When reading the book “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Ms. Robin Wall Kimmerer, I resonate with her aboriginal way of viewing the world, in which they don’t see many things as nouns, but as verbs. She wrote, “To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land and even a day, the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms.”
I feel the process of making works for me is also a verb; it is a path of becoming and understanding myself, just like in nature. From 2017 to 2022, I had been working as a pottery apprentice with my master, Mr. Ono Teppei, for about 4 years, staying in a mountain village called Taniai in Kochi, Japan.
During that time, I lived very close to the mountain. In the summer forest, there were cicadas and many unknown insects singing; different animals, insects, plants, and wind made so many sounds surrounding them. In the autumn, alongside the road, silver grass covers both sides before entering the forest. They were like some animals who wake up during this season. Before the sunset, when walking in the woods, the warm yellowish light reflection shined on the wet plants; the whole land was like an animal.
When I was walking in the mountains on the day after the snow fell, the mountain was pale blue-white. Sometimes I was lucky enough to meet deer. The woods were covered by the snow quilt; it was fairly quiet. I could easily hear the fallen snow on the soft ground. The shape and sound of the forest were both round. In spring, the air was cold but not freezing, and the little pieces of new green appeared here and there, from the trees, from the ground, and from the moss stone. The brook sang again, joyfully. This is the time of the land. This creature breaths with each and every lives, and so I am, and so we are.