Soft Sacks, Velvet Dark

Soft Sacks, Velvet Dark is an immersive, introspective experience of moving images on multiple screens. A sequence of four video works is shown, first on one screen, then on three canvases in parallel. The screening reflects physical interconnections that are woven through the invisible connections between internality, viscerality and darkness. The short films and video works presented as part of this screening depict bodies — both living and dead, human and herbal — as malleable carriers of dreams, memories, wounds and stories of violence.

Ma Qiusha presents a monologue that she recites with a razor in her mouth. It tells of childhood memories in which a mother's love is perceived as both selfless and violent. Mai Ling questions conventional notions of Asian femininity by making connections between women's bodies and kudzu plants. Maya Watanabe documents the interior of a skull as a complex landscape, tracing the armed internal conflicts in Peru during the period from 1980 to 2000. Using Buddhist sutras, Han Mengyun reflects on her own postpartum depression and explores the question of how women's experiences could be combined across different regions and periods of time. As an essential part of physical experience, the conceptual and visual themes of darkness and night are deepened by multiplying the projection screens — both in terms of the perceived vulnerability they contain and in terms of the regenerative power they unleash.

At the beginning of the presentation, Qu Chang (HKW, Berlin) and Jessica Kwok (Asymmetry Foundation, London) will give an introduction.

List of works shown:

Maya Watanabe, Bullet, 2021, 10'

Ma Qiusha, From No.4 Pingyuanli to No.4 Tianqiaobeili, 2007, 7' 54"

Mai Ling, Becoming Stickiness, 2023, 25' 07"

Han Mengyun, Night Sutra, 2024, 46' 13"