Hundred Flowers

"Let a hundred flowers bloom," a political promise from China's Mao era that ultimately failed, now circulates as a metaphor suspended between promise and betrayal. It reveals the eternal paradox of power dynamics: while discourse invites all things to grow, actions sharpen the tools of repression. However, true vitality has never ceased to blossom; it silently refuses to be defined by a singular history in the gaps of the official narrative.

Inspired by this, I studied the global movements since 1900 that have used flowers as spiritual symbols. The collective memory of these movements has been transformed into a poetic material archive: hundreds of white porcelain petals of various shapes. Each petal represents a specific struggle or vision, forming a micro-resistance against enforced homogenization through its uniqueness. In the high-temperature kiln of 1300 degrees, these petals undergo a dialectical transformation of matter: on the brink of near destruction, they are endowed with an eternal form, symbolizing the fragility and resilience of the movements they represent.

This white is not void; it is filled with the potential state of all possibilities. It is both a silent rejection of enforced expression and a blank waiting for a future that has yet to arrive.

In an era where even resistance can be quickly commodified, these silent objects, with their pure physical presence, attempt to redefine the boundaries of politics. They prompt us to seek out the habitats of those repressed possibilities—habitats that may not lie in the clamor of discourse, but in the enduring resilience of matter. These white porcelain flowers quietly wait, hoping for a season when the political vitality of flowers no longer requires any ideological defense and can bloom freely.