Seongsan Art Hall

TONG Wenmin, Chongqing Weeds, 2021-2023, pottery plate underglazes ( × 71pcs ), dimensions variable, Courtesy of WHITE SPACE, Supported by the 7th Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2024

In Chongqing Weeds, TONG Wenmin focuses on the kind of common weed found among structures that have fallen into ruin. Considering how the faded and fleeting souls of such weeds can transfer themselves to other objects to continue their lives, the artist carefully researches the species and names of these supposedly insignificant weeds, then draws the plants and the information about them on clay made from the soil in which they grew. She then fires them in a 1300-degree kiln to preserve their spirits by turning them into ceramic plates. Fated for removal as their urban ruin habitats are cleared away, these weeds are given a brief extension of life, etched into ceramic — but the very fragility of the ceramic, in turn, hints at their continued precarity.

 

Seongsan Art Hall

Tong Wenmin, Archive of Sunburnt Marks of Botanical Specimens, 2021, archival inkjet print, photo rag baryta paper, aluminum composite panels, 30 × 23 cm, Courtesy of WHITE SPACE

Archive of Sunburnt Marks of Botanical Specimens is a part of TONG Wenmin’s From South to North project. Over the course of the year that TONG spent working on Chongqing Weeds, he grew closer with the weeds themselves, even carrying them on her body. Collecting species native to Chongqing and Wenan, she turned them into specimens, placed them on her body, and bathed in the sun for five hours every day for nineteen days — then went on to photograph the imprints of these plants etched on her body by the light.