Staged Regrowth

Staged Regrowth is a four-part series (Manufactured Softness, Engineered Trigger, Constructed Rhizome, and Fabricated Heart) that shows colourful twisted bar flowers growing out of stumps made of black clay and plastic mesh. The flowers in the artworks appear bright and fluffy at first, they are based on Chinese flower-arranging customs and the concept of "new life from dead wood". But if you look more closely, some parts of the flowers show burnt surfaces and metal armatures that are visible. These intentional signs of human creation and destruction criticise anthropocentrism, which is our ongoing assumption that we have power over nature, even when we try to copy or restore it. Even if fire isn't a visual part of the pieces, its spirit is still in the material history of each one. Through this delicate story, Staged Regrowth talks about how fire affects both ecosystems and human consciousness in the long term. It questions how sincere and effective human efforts to rebuild natural resilience are.