Crimson Sap Flowing Through My Veins

For many years, my mother has been sleeping alone every night in the corner of a king-size rosewood bed, a bed made of a material and in a shape that her husband chose for her. My mother’s body, shrouded by the rosewood, has become a part of her image in my mind. This artistic research begins with my cursed memories of my parents and the rosewood furniture in their house. This sort of furniture is made of a “fabricated” material that costs more than gold, at the expense of many endangered species of tree in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America that takes from decades to hundreds years to grow. However, now it is considered a Chinese cultural heritage, while at the same time being sold as a modern consumer product. Following the “tradition” of liberating the haunting ghosts in East-Asian horror films, I tried to lift the curse of the memories by revisiting the beginning of the story, deep in the rainforest in Thailand, where rosewoods grow as trees. This endless journey leads towards a temporally and spatially untraceable territory, in which I have been throughout my life.