福

Since I was a kid, the Spring Festival was always my most anticipated festival of the year. But unfortunately, I have not been able to return home and celebrate the spring festival with my family for two years because of the epidemic. So This year’s Spring Festival for me was accompanied by coldness and loneliness, and a touch of horror. I integrated these feelings and made a project called “福” to hold this feeling of isolation and insecurity during these days. So this work, “福” reverses the rituals around the Spring Festival, adding anxiety and fear as a spice to the originally positive intentions of the Spring Festival rituals.

Chinese festivals are all about rituals, and the Spring Festival has the largest number of them. All these rituals are used by people to pray for good fortune for the coming year. The traditional ritual includes putting the spring couplets and Chinese New Year paintings on the doors, as well as the character “福“(fortune). The word “Fu” is usually puts upside down, which means “good fortune has arrived” in Chinese and symbolizes good luck. New Year paintings are basically the protrate of Chinese gods and goddesses. They are posted on the door to protect people, and they often appear in a symmetrical form. All these rituals are used by people to pray for good fortune for the following year.

The work is in the form of a digital painting that can be printed out and put on the door. The spring couplets, the word “福” and A set of New Year paintings in this project are all similar to the traditional items that are used to pray for luck in reality, but I have transformed the positive elements in the painting into negative elements, so it requires a closer look to find the meaning worth playing with. Because during the Chinese New Year, almost every Chinese family put the Spring Festival ritual set on their front door, it is interesting to hide a REVERSE version of the Spring Festival rituals set among millions of others and only find out the mystery of it when you look closer.

Start phrase:”Spring is coming. The trees are just starting to grow and sprout new branches but they all are black.”
End phrase:”The flowers are all in bloom and they are all white.”
Horizontal annotation：“All things are renewed”