A Mere Gesture is a series of works that explores the limits and possibilities of human connection across space and time. I made this project while I was taking online classes and living alone in Chicago because of COVID-19. Being physically distanced away from my used environment and my family and friends, I felt an overwhelming loneliness and desperation. I was urged to grasp something physical again to prove that I was still living among actual people, besides communicating with them in the virtual realm.

            Hair is a motif I have worked on for years. In Chinese culture, hair carries many significant meanings. Confucianism believes hair is a parents’ gift that needs to be treated with the utmost respect; traditional Chinese medicine sees hair as the surplus of human essence and blood; couples falling in love exchanges strands of hair as a symbol of commitment; and Buddhist monks must shave their hair as a symbol of renouncing their worldly ego. As a material, hair is a tangible and transferable part of the body that functions as a connective thread. I used it to describe my personal journey and the relationship between my community and me.

            From September 2020 to May 2021, I collected hair from my families, friends, and collages in and outside of Chicago. I used the flatbed scanner as the camera to make detailed photographs of each strand of hair. This image-making process renders microscopic views of individual hair that are not accessible to the naked eye, suggesting hints of the identities of their owners. All the people I’ve collected hair from, their existences, are miniaturized into physical threads containing someone’s unique DNA.