From 29 September to 3 November, Michelle Chang Qin (Chongqing, 1996) will present an installation of recently developed works at P/////AKT during the exhibition Fish Tale Tally. Through objects and installations, Chang Qin portrays labour, its processes, and its products as offerings to a great absence: amputated speech, forgotten rituals, and partial histories that escape collective memory but leave behind unspeakable burdens.

“Champollion fainted,” she says, “once he had wrested their secret from the hieroglyphs and saw them turn transparent. The serpent no longer with power to strike, but biting its tail. I smell my salts, my packets of words, panicked. I’m no longer sure whether they shape my reality or have too little mass to interact with naked matter. Then they would pass right through the earth as I will in death.”
(Rosmarie Waldrop, “Conversation 12: On Hieroglyphs” from Reluctant Gravities)

Drawing from the material and gestural vocabulary of an assembly line, she envisions sculptural instruments of pauses and repetitions. Threads may be woven tightly or loosely to create fabrics of care, ornament, filtration, or for capturing and concealing. Her work, stemming from improvised spaces within temporary facilities and interim structures often used in production sites, portrays an eternal in-between and fluidity, reflecting the unfinished thoughts and wandering avatars of a person engaged in monotonous tasks.