Zhenye
2024 - 2025
The "Firewall" transmutes the two-dimensional paper into a sculptural reality. Constructed from the pulp of student suicide reports collected since 2003, the work functions as a physical archive where language and image are reborn. Original, legible reports are sealed within sedimentary layers of thick, homogenized pulp, effectively burying decades of news information deep inside the wall structure.
The visceral burn marks across the surface become the only means of "seeing through": as the outer pulp layer is incinerated into ash and craters, the raw text hidden within the recesses is violently exposed. Here, the wall becomes a physical manifestation of accumulated time, and burning functions as an act of revelation. Rather than investigating individual cases, the project creates a quiet, contemplative space to reflect on the collective forgetting of memories in the age of the internet and social media.