The Death of Heywood
2012
Wood, plastic gears, wheals, news papers, food, 80 x 80 x 140 cm
In 2012, there are so many things going on between China and Britain. The most earthshaking one is the case of Bo Xilai. Bo is a Chinese politician. His wife poisoned a British businessman, Neil Heywood, and implicated in a number of serious problems. The United Kingdom government expressed concerns, and how they really serious to take this issue. Since this issue is very sensitive, and there are lots of gossip happening.
The work is a site-specific sculpture aims to serve food to British. The work functioning as a kind of cabinet, combined with mechanical gears. Some of the drawers will be locked on a horizontal angle it turns. The shape refers to Bagua (八卦，gossip), a symbol of Taoism that represents binary (Yin, Yang). Philologically, it relates to I Ching, trigram in English, and also means ‘gossip’ in Chinese, in which I would like to invite British spectators to participate in my ‘gossip’ of the murder case. Participants are invited to turn each tier and try to explore the drawers. The 3 levels are connected, which means turning one of them will trigger 3 of them moving together in the opposite direction. There are different kinds of stuff in the drawers that are related to the poisoning case, such as snacks, newspapers, empty, and disgusting things.
