Created By
Hong Wai
Hardened polyester lace with resin, pleated Chinese character "天" (Sky), "時" (Timing), "地" (Earth), "利" (Advantage), "人" (Humans), "和" (Harmony)
Curator
Luke Chapman
Suspended in mid-air, these floating islands evoke a liminal state, poised between presence and disappearance. The interplay of light and shadow—wherein lace silhouettes bloom into phantasmal mountains and drifting clouds—extends the work’s reach beyond its material boundaries, enveloping the audience in a choreography of perception. Here, shadow is not mere absence, but an active agent: a second protagonist that amplifies the narrative of resilience and delicacy. The artist’s feminist perspective is subtly inscribed in the very material logic of the work—lace as both a signifier of softness and a testament to the strength of craft traditions historically coded as feminine. The installation becomes a site where dichotomies collapse: fragility and fortitude, reality and reverie, are not oppositional but mutually generative. Ultimately, Lace Calligraphy Landscape—Floating Island offers viewers a space of poetic suspension—a terrain where calligraphy, landscape, and light converge, inviting each participant to locate their own sense of agency and wonder within the floating, ever-shifting islands of meaning.
In "Lace Calligraphy Landscape—Floating Islands", the artist orchestrates a compelling negotiation between the inherited gravitas of Chinese calligraphy and the tactile intimacy of lace, situating the work at the confluence of tradition and contemporary materiality. This installation, conceived site-specifically for Volta Basel’s Public Sculpture Sector, deftly reimagines the calligraphic gesture as a spatial event—one that oscillates between the corporeal and the ephemeral. The act of folding lace into calligraphic forms is not merely a technical intervention, but a conceptual re-inscription of language into landscape. The resultant topographies—mountainous yet diaphanous—invite the viewer to traverse both surface and depth, revealing hidden textualities embedded within the undulations of fabric. In this way, the work enacts a kind of slow reading, where meaning is not immediately apprehended but emerges through embodied encounter.
Created By
Hong Wai
Hardened polyester lace with resin, pleated Chinese characters: 天.時.地.利.人.和
The installation consists of six individual sculptures suspended from the ceiling. Dimensions are approximate and may vary by 10–20% depending on the hanging method.
100 x 75 cm | 39 x 30 in
Hanging suspension bracket and wire x 6
59 cm | 23 in
2025
