Lost in translation
Video installation that consists of:
Part I: video projected on paper/fabric/tape screens
Part II: video on the TV set
Sound, dimension variable
Werkwarenhuis, Den Bosch, NL/Galerie SK, Solingen, DE
2020/2021
“Do we exchange information or emotions, feeling, etc., into effect even if we do not speak the same mother language?”
The idea comes from my previous job experience; I worked in an international Swiss artist residency program in Shanghai. I have spent time with many foreign artists from 6 months to 2 years. We are not able to speak our mother language. Thus, I often doubt that we have communicated.
I collected the “traces” from artists in residency by coincidence: a piece of their artwork, a music clip they made, a photo, or even a note or a tissue…I keep them carefully. After I resigned from my job, I contacted them through the social app (as they are already back in their countries). I requested them to answer three questions in their mother language. Then I translated the answer with a video(s) or photo(s) I made by the traces I collected. I didn’t use translation.
Part I

Exhibition view, Galerie SK, Solingen, DE, 2021


The shape and materials of the screens is inspired by the word confabulation. It refers to the production or creation of false or erroneous memories without the intent to deceive. Maybe we cannot talk; we only confabulate. Especially communicating in another language, we just come together, then make a “fabric” to cover each other.


The distorted image projected on the wrinkled paper is like the information we receive when we almost understand each other.
Part II


In part two, I finally translated the answers into English, but I only showed the part I cared about most in the first place and blurry the rest. The image behind it is the traces from the speaker.