The personalities of puppets

Hello, Wall focuses on the Taipingxu area, a 400-year-old street in Xiqiao town, Foshan, Guangdong province. Created by 35-year-old Chen Fenwan, and combined with paper-cutting elements, the piece was inspired by her reimagining of the old town's former prosperity and observations of its current state.

Chen visited the street three times. The old architecture of Taipingxu bears the marks of time, with peeling walls that suggest the hollow imprint left by the passage of years. At some point, these traces were gently peeled away, leaving fragments of the past.

"I'm a curious observer, and I tend to magnify the granular details I encounter," Chen says, adding that she viewed these wall fragments as slices of time.

She collected the fragments and sought to give them a sense of belonging, by acquiring a list of past Taipingxu residents, and connecting each fragment to a name and enabling forgotten memories to resurface.

In its spatial presentation, Hello, Wall takes the form of a banyan tree, a symbol of vitality in Lingnan culture (the culture of Guangdong and nearby provinces in southeastern China). The banyan tree's aerial roots grow continuously, sometimes touching the ground and becoming new trunks, symbolizing regeneration. This contrast between the tree's life cycle and the peeling walls reflects the theme of the work.

"I don't aim to evoke simple nostalgia. The banyan tree's vitality softens any potential sadness," Chen explains. "Time has carved the peeling walls, and I have carved the people who once lived behind them into these fragments."