The Wind’s Breath Lingers

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers (installation overview from MFA thesis exhibition). 2025. Xuan paper, incense, incense ashes.

Work Statement

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers explores how uncertainty can become a space of possibility, rather than a condition to overcome. Drawing on the Daoist principle of wu-wei (无为,effortless action), this installation creates an environment where transformation is emergent rather than imposed. Suspended sheets of Xuan paper curve like breath exhaled but never dispersed, holding traces of burnt incense, unfolding through daily rituals that accumulate like moments suspended in time. Smoke drifts. Ash accumulates. Layers of time become visible in the traces left behind. The work choreographs space, shaping how the viewer’s body moves through it. The time spent in making translates into the time a viewer spends experiencing. Each person brings their own duration and rhythm, their presence affecting the space just as the space affects them. The space shifts with each breath, each movement. The work invites a different kind of attention: not to understand, but to experience. To feel the constant becoming in uncertainty.

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers (installation overview from MFA thesis exhibition). 2025.

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers features nine suspended Xuan paper scrolls arranged in the gallery space — a central curved formation of seven overlapping layers with two single scrolls on either side. The scrolls vary in length from 12 to 18 meters. Each scroll bears a continuous burned line created through the controlled application of incense, which perforates the paper’s surface. Below on the gallery floor, a line of incense ash accumulates from ceremonial burning performances. The installation responds to air currents, changing light, and human presence, creating an environment where transformation and impermanence become tangible experiences.

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers (detail). 2025.

In Making 风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers

Running through the length of each suspended sheet was a continuous burned line, created by the controlled application of incense. The burning process took place with multiple sheets of Xuan paper layered together. The incense stick was held at a consistent distance as I moved slowly along the sheets, allowing heat to gradually perforate the surface. This layering technique created varied intensity in the burn marks, with the topmost sheet received the most direct exposure to heat, resulting in more defined perforations, while the layers beneath absorbed a more diffused impression.

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers (detail). 2025.

无为Wu-wei

The process of creation is guided by the Daoist principle of 无为 wu-wei, often translated as
“effortless action” or “non-action.” In my practice, this manifests through burning incense on Xuan paper—not planning the path of marks, but allowing my hand to move with the flow, guided by breath, gravity, and the rhythm of the incense itself. This “naturalness” did not come immediately. It emerged from daily practice, as my body gradually memorized these subtle flows through countless sessions of burning incense. The initial concentration, adjustments, and experimentation eventually settled into a rhythm requiring no deliberate control. My attention gradually shifted from “I am doing this” to “it is happening itself.” As the incense slowly burns, I simply breathe with it, watching as traces of time reveal themselves layer by layer on the Xuan paper. Smoke drifts, ash accumulates, like breath not yet dissipated. The space transforms subtly with each breath, each movement.

Still from Video Documenting Incense Burning on Site during 风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers. 2025.

Incense Burning on Site: A Slowly Unfolding Dialogue

Throughout the exhibition period, the installation included five ceremonial burnings where cone-shaped incense was arranged and ignited along a precise line on the gallery floor. Each burning session functioned as both ritual and temporal marker, activating the installation space through multiple sensory dimensions.

In the exhibition space,
the incense is not burned for anyone or anything,
but naturally unfolds in a state of wu-wei.
You do not need to approach it, yet it approaches you.
It is a dialogue slowly unfolding between space, body, and breath.

风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers (incense cone burning on site). 2025.