passing by, washing over

Performance, single-channel 4K video, 7:46 mins
2024

☞ Watch on Youtube

This performance / video piece explores ways to negotiate with the past, re-construct ingrained narratives, heal from generational baggage, and how this process relates to embodied experience. The projected imagery includes text and narratives from the artist’s childhood, scenes from the family history, her own calligraphy and various footages of water flowing in locations all around the world. As the projection washes over her body, the artist performs, almost like a ritual, to embody the process of growth, suffering and reflection, ultimately arriving at healing and peace.

Performance & Production by
Ningxia Zhang

Music & Sound Design by
wisefake*

* wisefake is a Toronto-based sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, score & soundtrack composer & producer. His works won a best score awards in Los Angeles Film Festival, and had been heard in lots of film festivals such as Cannes and Berlin International Film Festival.

More from the artist

I started to envision this piece in the summer of 2022. One day I suddenly felt the immense weight of the past, the memories of three decades of my life. I desperately wanted them to wash over me, so that I could breathe freely again and become pure. Some of the experiences leave scars on the mind, even if they’re not visible. I want to know if we can make them fade. As life incessantly flows forward, this weight keeps accumulating. How much more weight can I take on, if I don’t know how to let go?

The waters, everywhere else in the world, far away from home, can it wash away the old wounds? Can I be at this very moment, devoid of what the past has made me? Or every second I’m anew, as the new waves wash over me? Or through fire can I transport to another world, similar to how the Chinese traditionally communicate with ancestors? Or it will only deepen the wounds, and take away the aliveness? Or is aliveness just an illusion?

My mother makes videos out of memories and imagery of the past. It seems highly meaningful and important to her, even though she never articulated why she does it. She collects and preserves old photographs, takes pictures of certain objects, and combines them with her words into videos. They are about commemorating deceased family members, making sense of her past and present, expressing love and care. I only realized this similar tendency in me in recent years.

I included Chinese text, both in typed format and my own calligraphy. The characters, contain stories and narratives themselves, are encoded with meanings. I was particularly struck by the visual impact of the flowing characters when I visited the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum in Japan, where artist Yukinori Yanagi created site-specific installations based on the life story of Yukio Mishima.

Water flowing often symbolizes the passage of time and life. Confucius has this famous saying as he stands on the river bank:

“that which passes is like this river, flowing unceasingly, day and night”.

It’s a reminder of impermanence, one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism.

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh said:

“Whether it’s a large wave or a small wave, half a wave or a third of a wave, it is still made out of water. Water is beyond all these qualifications—it is without birth and without death. A wave is really only water, and as far as water is concerned, all waves are equal because all waves are water.”

Images and footages

Archival photographs from the artist’s family album, Hubei, China, 1990s
Burning spirit money at the artist’s grandfather’s grave, Hubei, China, 2023
1st water flowing, La Fortuna, Costa Rica, 2022
2nd water flowing, Oslo, Norway, 2023
3rd water flowing, La Fortuna, Costa Rica, Costa Rica, 2022
4th water flowing, Hierve el Agua, Mexico, 2023
5th water flowing, Central Park, NY, USA, 2023
Final water flowing, Central Park, NY, USA, 2023

Chinese text

Typed text:

你跟妈妈长得这么像，也会跟妈妈一样命苦
You take after mom. You’ll take after mom’s ill fate as well.

你要是个男孩子，我对你的期望就完全不一样了
If you were a boy, my expectations for you would have been completely different.

不许唱东方红这首歌
It’s forbidden to sing the song The East Is Red.

表哥表姐们都没有你眼睛大，但是你鼻子塌
Your cousins don’t have the big eyes as yours. But your nose is flat.

你是爷爷的小拐棍，爷爷最喜欢你
You are grandpa’s little cane, the apple of his eye.

你抓周的时候抓的是一本书，说明你就是会读书
When you did zhuazhou you grabbed a book. That means you’ll just excel at studies.

我们家跟别人家不一样，我们家穷
Our family is different from others. Ours is poor.

你爸爸今天不能来接你了，警察叔叔带你去吃饺子好不好
Today your dad can’t come pick you up. I, the friendly police officer, will take you to have dumplings. Sounds good?

这是你的新家吗？这也太小了吧
Is this your new home? It’s so small.

女生数学都学不好，以后你数学学不会了，就跟舅舅去学画画
Girls can never do well with maths. When you can’t comprehend maths, you can come learn art with uncle.

你做不成艺术家，你想象力不行
You can’t make an artist. Your imagination is poor.

妈妈肚子总是不舒服，妈妈可能是得了癌症了
Mom always has a stomachache. Perhaps mom has cancer.

不要理她，她自己哭累了就会好
Don’t bother with her. She will be ok once she’s tired with crying.

跟你说了多少遍，遇事不烦，遇事不烦
How many times I’ve told you? Don’t get angered. Don’t get angered.

你爸去网吧了，就没回来
Your dad went to the Internet cafe and never came back

Calligraphy:

从一出生起就开
When I was born

始腐化衰败无尽
I started to decay. Endless

的黑暗无声的哭
darkness and muffled cries.

泣厌恶自己难以
Despise my body

逃离的躯壳厄运
like a prison. Fate seems

似乎永不能置我
never to leave me

于安宁巨大无情
in calm. The giant merciless

的机器将我碾压
machine runs me over.

海洋想要吞噬我
The sea wants to take me.

刀锋想要撕裂我
The knife wants to slit me.

幼年被死亡的恐
In childhood I was woken

惧惊醒如今梦魇
by the nightmares of death.

骤然消去痛苦终
Today the fears dispersed. Suffering has

有尽头欢乐短暂
its end. Happiness is fleeting.

且时常乐极生悲
And often “extreme joy brings sorrow”.

爱难求人易逝散
Love is hard to come by. People leave easily.

落一地酸痛失望
Scattered on the floor, disappointed and sore.

人生在世不称意
The world's not going my way,

明朝散发弄扁舟
Tomorrow, I will untie my hair and my boat, I will be free.