The Boat of Birth and Death

In 2024, the “Creation | New Jiangnan Space Art” exhibition, co-organized by the Songjiang District Culture and Tourism Bureau and the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University, opened at the Yunjian Culture and Art Center, Songjiang, Shanghai. The exhibition explores and refines the cultural essence of Jiangnan through four dimensions: installation, images, videos, and text. Zigeng Wang, the founder and principal architect of PILLS, was invited to participate in the exhibition. The show features a collaborative work, with Zigeng Wang’s installation, Xiaodan Huang’s text, and Qing Zhao’s painting. The artwork “The Boat of Birth and Death" is modeled after a wooden boat in the south of the Yangtze River in the Jiangnan region. It is placed within a boat-shaped wooden exhibition hall, guiding visitors to slowly walk along a black ramp into the “boat cabin" to experience the exhibition. Zigeng Wang's exhibited work envisions a scene in a world where water, the underwater, and varying densities of time intertwine. At its core, a boat endlessly sails towards its destination, only to sink repeatedly to the riverbed—a haunting metaphor for destiny. The centerpiece of the artwork is a multidimensional structure composed of countless fragments from broken wooden boats. These fragments are stitched and reassembled, forming a spatial narrative of destruction and renewal. Through precise projection lighting in two orthogonal directions, the installation reveals dual realities: one side casts the silhouette of withered lotus leaves, while the other blooms with vibrant lotus flowers. This interplay of light and shadow alternates between ruin and regeneration, as frontal and side projections shift in visual rhythm. Between the rise and fall of thoughts, and the endless cycle of bloom and decay, the work reflects the human condition: the perpetual fallout of choices made and chances missed. The text created by Xiaodan Huang, comes partly from the reiteration of Li Shangyin's poetry. We extract the four characters, “hate," “love," “river," and “lotus" from Li Shangyin's stanza “Traveling Alone to Qujiang River in Late Spring," and combine them into derivatives that each claims a position in the spectrum of emotions. It presents the situation in which love thrusts a person between the opposites of sweetness and pain. This is a re-mystification of Li Shangyin's poem. Visually, the flickering of the phrases creates a verbal montage, simulating a human being's experience of changes and oscillations amid the eternal cycle. On the left side of the exhibition hall hangs Qing Zhao’s painting, a work that intertwines two layers of narrative through the careful overlap of pigments and the precise manipulation of light. Under normal lighting, the painting reveals a damaged boat amidst blooming lotus flowers on the water’s surface. However, when illuminated by ultraviolet light, a hidden narrative emerges: the wrecked ship is uncovered, with stems reaching out from its ruins to support the lotus life floating atop the water. The two seemingly separate worlds are thus intertwined, showing that life and death are not opposites, but only a continuous transformation along the trajectory of time. To evoke the multisensory essence of Jiangnan, the exhibition hall's walls are adorned with ink-painted Xuan paper, gently releasing the fragrance of ink into the air. This scent, paired with immersive projections, blurs the lines between time and emotion, drawing the audience into a contemplative void. The black walls dissolve the hall’s physical boundaries, erasing conventional visual frameworks and creating an ethereal spatial experience. Under the projected lighting, the painting, text, and installation become the main visual guides within the space. The fragmented, overlapping boat with the shifting light and shadow juxtaposes different times and spaces in front of the viewer. Under the shifting play of projected light, the fragmented, overlapping boat becomes a dynamic focal point, juxtaposing different times and spaces before the viewer. Lights cast from multiple directions form opposing images, weaving together conflicting narratives. Within this interplay of light and shadow, the ebb and flow of lotus flowers emerge, suspended in an enigmatic abyss of black and white. In this space, human emotions reverberate between the fragmented boat, flowing text, and layered images, becoming more profound and resonant—much like the introspective process of “deep meditation" in literature. The exhibition transcends its physical boundaries, inviting the audience into a realm of heightened self-awareness and internal dialogue. Beholding the artwork, the installation, text, and paintings converge to reinterpret the essence of Jiangnan across three dimensions, swirling together within the space. The viewer’s gaze lingers on the piece before extending beyond it, into the void—where the illusory nature of existence emerges, and the boundaries of reality dissolve into ambiguity. Amid the abyss, there is no black and white, no day and night. Love and hate flips, and the weight of a thousand pounds dissipates into that of feathers. What remains is an illusion—unceasingly flickering, collapsing, and reforming—plunging endlessly into the Samsāra of becoming, sustaining, destruction, and emptiness.

Project Information Project type: Exhibition Space and Artwork Design Project Location: Yunjian Culture and Art Center, Songjiang, Shanghai Installation and Spatial Design Artist: Zigeng Wang Textual Creation Artist: Xiaodan Huang Painting Creation Artist: Qing Zhao Installation Design and Production: PILLS / Shilin Liu, Yi Xu, Manying Wang, Xin Zhang, Peiyan Liu, Kaijun Wang, Jiaxin You Lighting Consultant: Xiuhong Ma Lighting Sponsor: Akzu Lightsystem Co., Ltd. Xuan Paper Production: Beijing Ruyitang Culture Media Service Co., Ltd. Art Logistics: Shouxing Tuotao (Beijing) Art Exhibition Service Co., Ltd. Exhibition Information Exhibition Title: “Creation | New Jiangnan Space Art” Co-organizers: Songjiang District Culture and Tourism Bureau, The College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University Chief Curator: Zheng Tan Co-Curators: Quan Yu Exhibition Dates: July 19, 2024 - September 15, 2024