Resonance

Resonance 

Mineral pigments on Xuan paper
2026
Zhejiang

 
"Resonance" emerged from a state of weightlessness experienced by Chengyu Yao.

After a prolonged immersion in the narratives and relational structures of others, she gradually lost authority over her own language and judgment. Expression slowed, perception blurred, and existence itself seemed to be peeled away layer by layer.

She sensed the disappearance of her subjectivity, yet could not articulate its cause.

In response, she began drawing floor tiles — geometric orders drawn from everyday space. The most ordinary, stable, and silent structures were repeatedly traced, dismantled, and reconstructed, compulsively reaffirmed again and again upon xuan paper.

Only after completion did the red and white lines reveal another layer of meaning: they resemble blades, torn flesh, exposed organs, or unnamed ritual formations. These shapes, lines, and colours are not decorative geometry but boundaries. Repetition is not ornamentation but an act of self-recall. Symmetry is not formal strategy but a method of stabilising one’s centre of gravity.

"Resonance" is not an act of healing; it is closer to a campaign of reclamation: Give them back — my sovereignty, my language, my consciousness, my order, my existence.

When language is taken, judgment destabilised, and subjectivity displaced, structure becomes the only means through which the self can be reassembled. The work does not answer the world, nor explain itself to anyone; it simply insists, again and again, on one fact — that she still retains the right to determine the form of her own existence.
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