Two Bridges, 2019. Two-channel video installation with brick viewing platform, 5.5 x 16 x 8’. Commissioned for the 2019 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (Shenzhen), Qiaotou Community, Bao’an Sub-venue. Installation view top and edited video excerpt below.
The name of this community, Qiaotou, means “an end of a bridge.” Since an end is also a beginning of sorts, and a bridge is a liminal space between two locations where a great imagining can occur, I have used the image of a bridge as a symbol for technological advancement and as a stage for connection.
We constantly attempt to build bridges between ourselves and others, between cities/regions/cultures/countries/continents and between the present and the past. These bridges sometimes get knocked down but our desire for connection propels us to rebuild them, often making them stronger.
The images of two stone bridges appear, disappear and appear again in this video installation: The Falls Rail Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America where I live and the Yongxing Bridge (永兴桥) in Shenzhen, China. We can imagine these stone bridges being built collectively by hand: the gift of stone from the earth, the labor of cutting those stones, their transportation to the bridge site, the engineering of the structure, the building of the foundation, and finally laying the stones individually until they add up to become a bridge. Time, energy, use, and connection is embedded within the form.
The videos consist of the bridges being drawn and then washed away or pushed into a distance only to reemerge. The bridges are drawn and undrawn with a deep red earth pigment that I recently collected from the southeastern region of the United States where I spent my childhood and early adult life. For me, this red pigment represents the vitality of the earth but also the complexities of place that have affected my body and experiences as I move through the world.