Breathe

Growing up in Shenzhen, Bai was surrounded by popular images of science fiction, UFOs, and imagined extraterrestrial technology, and often imagined discovering a landed or crashed craft in a forest. Breathe translates this earlier image into physical space. Stainless and galvanized steel form the shell, while lighting, artificial moss, and his existing symbolic language are assembled within it.

Unlike the meditating figure viewed in STOP, Breathe turns meditation into a position a visitor can physically occupy. People can enter, sit, and remain inside. A mechanical shell and artificial vegetation form a manufactured environment in which science-fiction imagery becomes a bodily space rather than an image alone.

Only after installation did wind moving through apertures of different sizes and across the metal unexpectedly produce subtle sounds that vary with site conditions. This was not part of the original acoustic design, but it became part of the work as experienced. The Chinese title, Xi, suggests breathing, pausing, and resting; wind, light, and visitors continually alter the state within the permanent structure.