Form Heals Form
This series takes the traditional concept of Form Heals Form—the belief that the body can be healed through similar forms—as its starting point. Using porcelain and enamel, it explores how the shapes, colours, and textures of food have been associated with the human body.
Rather than proving or dismissing these dietary beliefs, the works consider how they persist through family memories, folk knowledge, bodily anxieties, and contemporary consumer culture. By realistically recreating, transforming, and recombining familiar foods, the series invites viewers to consider how people use resemblance to imagine healing, restoration, and comfort when facing illness, ageing, and the unknown—and to reflect on the complex relationship between science, tradition, and cultural experience.
Rather than proving or dismissing these dietary beliefs, the works consider how they persist through family memories, folk knowledge, bodily anxieties, and contemporary consumer culture. By realistically recreating, transforming, and recombining familiar foods, the series invites viewers to consider how people use resemblance to imagine healing, restoration, and comfort when facing illness, ageing, and the unknown—and to reflect on the complex relationship between science, tradition, and cultural experience.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Solo Exhibition
Title: Full of Vitality
Material: White porcelain with partial red glaze, unglazed red porcelain, copper, rubber, 24K gold, beaker |
Title: Strong Bones
Material: Unglazed white porcelain, 24K gold |
Title: Getting Smarter
Material: Unglazed white porcelain with partial enamel glaze, synthetic hair |
Title: So Thick
Material: Unglazed white porcelain with black Linglong glaze, saggar porcelain, 24K gold, synthetic hair |
Concept:
This exhibition takes the traditional Chinese dietary belief “nourishing like with like” (以形补形) as its point of departure. Through a series of freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures made primarily from ceramics, enamel, and metal, I reconsider a philosophy deeply rooted in the rhythms of everyday Chinese life. The exhibition includes approximately five works from the Black Sesame Nourishes the Hair series, a group of wall-based and sculptural works titled Pig’s Feet Nourish the Feet, an installation titled Red Dates Nourish the Blood, and two sculptures titled Walnuts Nourish the Brain. Rather than attempting to prove or disprove the medical efficacy of these dietary practices, the works create a space in which viewers may reflect on how human beings have understood their relationship with the natural world, and how, when confronted with illness, injury, ageing, and the unknown, we have developed ideas of healing, restoration, compensation, and comfort.
My perspective is rooted in China, but it has also been shaped by many years of studying, working, and living in the West. Throughout my childhood and everyday life, I often heard elders say that black sesame should be eaten to prevent hair loss or greying, that children should eat walnuts while growing or studying, that red dates replenish the blood, and that tremella mushroom and snow pear soothe coughs and nourish the lungs. At first, I understood these practices as distinctly Chinese. Over time, however, encounters with people from different regions, histories, religions, and folk traditions led me to recognize that cultural practices can differ greatly while remaining connected. Ways of thinking similar to “nourishing like with like” appeared in many premodern cultures and continue today in varied forms. They are not merely the customs of one particular culture, but part of a broader human effort—especially before the formation of modern scientific systems—to understand nature, the body, and life itself.
Today, “nourishing like with like” is often dismissed as unscientific, anecdotal, or superstitious. Yet when placed within the historical conditions in which knowledge was once produced, it is not simply irrational. In Chapter Three of The Golden Bough, anthropologist James George Frazer describes sympathetic magic as operating through the “law of similarity”: the belief that like produces like. People might therefore believe that eating a particular animal or body part could transfer its strength, speed, courage, or intelligence to the human body. This idea offers an anthropological frame for beliefs such as black sesame nourishing the hair, pig’s feet strengthening the feet, red dates replenishing the blood, and walnuts supporting the brain. These associations do not constitute evidence in the modern scientific sense. Instead, they reflect an ancient way of interpreting the relationship between human beings and the natural world through resemblance.
Within this system of thought, the blackness of sesame evokes dark hair; the red colour of dates corresponds to blood; the pig’s foot, as the weight-bearing limb of an animal, is imagined as nourishment for human legs and feet; and the translucent, moist textures of tremella mushroom and snow pear suggest the soothing of the lungs. Such relationships may not indicate medical efficacy, but together they form a way of knowing nature woven from shape, colour, function, texture, and sensory experience. Food becomes more than a source of nutrition: it becomes a medium through which humans and nature mirror, interpret, and give meaning to one another.
Modern medicine reminds us that resemblance does not establish effectiveness. Fractures, anaemia, hair loss, and respiratory illnesses require specific forms of nutrition, diagnosis, and treatment; they cannot be addressed simply by consuming something that resembles the affected part of the body. In contemporary consumer culture, the intuitive appeal of resemblance can also be commercially exploited. Foods, supplements, and wellness products may use the promise that “what looks alike nourishes alike” to package complex health concerns as quick, direct, and purchasable solutions. Such claims may offer familiarity and emotional comfort, but they may also produce misinformation and anxiety.
The relationship between scientific knowledge and folk experience, however, is not always a simple opposition. Walnuts, for example, have long been associated with the brain because of their appearance. Contemporary nutritional research has also suggested that components found in walnuts, including alpha-linolenic acid and polyphenols, may be associated with cognitive function and brain health. This does not mean that walnuts nourish the brain because they resemble it. Rather, it reveals the complex and ambiguous relationships that can exist among inherited experience, coincidence, nutritional evidence, and cultural imagination.
What draws me to this subject is therefore not the question of whether “nourishing like with like” should ultimately be classified as science or superstition. I am interested in what it reveals about human imagination in the face of the unknown. Advanced scientific research can reach into the most minute structures of matter and life, yet it cannot exhaust a universe in which the unknown remains far greater than the known. Truth is not a fixed conclusion, and human understanding is always being revised. Approaching another culture with openness, accepting what lies beyond one’s own experience, and allowing different systems of knowledge to be examined, questioned, and understood may be among the most meaningful aspects of cultural exchange.
The exhibition therefore considers how “nourishing like with like” moves among family memory, folk knowledge, reverence for nature, anxiety about the body, and contemporary consumer culture. I bring my Chinese experience into a Western context, inviting Western audiences to encounter cultural memories through foods that may appear both familiar and unfamiliar. At the same time, I bring my experience of the West back into my own reconsideration of Chinese culture. Through ceramic illusion and transformation, the colour and luminosity of enamel, and the bodily presence of metal, these works open a multidirectional space for reflection: How do we understand the relationship between humanity and the natural world? Amid difference, misunderstanding, and uncertainty, how might we learn to approach one another again?
The exhibition at Taoxichuan in Jingdezhen marks the beginning of this project’s continued development. The works will be expanded and presented in the future.
This exhibition takes the traditional Chinese dietary belief “nourishing like with like” (以形补形) as its point of departure. Through a series of freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures made primarily from ceramics, enamel, and metal, I reconsider a philosophy deeply rooted in the rhythms of everyday Chinese life. The exhibition includes approximately five works from the Black Sesame Nourishes the Hair series, a group of wall-based and sculptural works titled Pig’s Feet Nourish the Feet, an installation titled Red Dates Nourish the Blood, and two sculptures titled Walnuts Nourish the Brain. Rather than attempting to prove or disprove the medical efficacy of these dietary practices, the works create a space in which viewers may reflect on how human beings have understood their relationship with the natural world, and how, when confronted with illness, injury, ageing, and the unknown, we have developed ideas of healing, restoration, compensation, and comfort.
My perspective is rooted in China, but it has also been shaped by many years of studying, working, and living in the West. Throughout my childhood and everyday life, I often heard elders say that black sesame should be eaten to prevent hair loss or greying, that children should eat walnuts while growing or studying, that red dates replenish the blood, and that tremella mushroom and snow pear soothe coughs and nourish the lungs. At first, I understood these practices as distinctly Chinese. Over time, however, encounters with people from different regions, histories, religions, and folk traditions led me to recognize that cultural practices can differ greatly while remaining connected. Ways of thinking similar to “nourishing like with like” appeared in many premodern cultures and continue today in varied forms. They are not merely the customs of one particular culture, but part of a broader human effort—especially before the formation of modern scientific systems—to understand nature, the body, and life itself.
Today, “nourishing like with like” is often dismissed as unscientific, anecdotal, or superstitious. Yet when placed within the historical conditions in which knowledge was once produced, it is not simply irrational. In Chapter Three of The Golden Bough, anthropologist James George Frazer describes sympathetic magic as operating through the “law of similarity”: the belief that like produces like. People might therefore believe that eating a particular animal or body part could transfer its strength, speed, courage, or intelligence to the human body. This idea offers an anthropological frame for beliefs such as black sesame nourishing the hair, pig’s feet strengthening the feet, red dates replenishing the blood, and walnuts supporting the brain. These associations do not constitute evidence in the modern scientific sense. Instead, they reflect an ancient way of interpreting the relationship between human beings and the natural world through resemblance.
Within this system of thought, the blackness of sesame evokes dark hair; the red colour of dates corresponds to blood; the pig’s foot, as the weight-bearing limb of an animal, is imagined as nourishment for human legs and feet; and the translucent, moist textures of tremella mushroom and snow pear suggest the soothing of the lungs. Such relationships may not indicate medical efficacy, but together they form a way of knowing nature woven from shape, colour, function, texture, and sensory experience. Food becomes more than a source of nutrition: it becomes a medium through which humans and nature mirror, interpret, and give meaning to one another.
Modern medicine reminds us that resemblance does not establish effectiveness. Fractures, anaemia, hair loss, and respiratory illnesses require specific forms of nutrition, diagnosis, and treatment; they cannot be addressed simply by consuming something that resembles the affected part of the body. In contemporary consumer culture, the intuitive appeal of resemblance can also be commercially exploited. Foods, supplements, and wellness products may use the promise that “what looks alike nourishes alike” to package complex health concerns as quick, direct, and purchasable solutions. Such claims may offer familiarity and emotional comfort, but they may also produce misinformation and anxiety.
The relationship between scientific knowledge and folk experience, however, is not always a simple opposition. Walnuts, for example, have long been associated with the brain because of their appearance. Contemporary nutritional research has also suggested that components found in walnuts, including alpha-linolenic acid and polyphenols, may be associated with cognitive function and brain health. This does not mean that walnuts nourish the brain because they resemble it. Rather, it reveals the complex and ambiguous relationships that can exist among inherited experience, coincidence, nutritional evidence, and cultural imagination.
What draws me to this subject is therefore not the question of whether “nourishing like with like” should ultimately be classified as science or superstition. I am interested in what it reveals about human imagination in the face of the unknown. Advanced scientific research can reach into the most minute structures of matter and life, yet it cannot exhaust a universe in which the unknown remains far greater than the known. Truth is not a fixed conclusion, and human understanding is always being revised. Approaching another culture with openness, accepting what lies beyond one’s own experience, and allowing different systems of knowledge to be examined, questioned, and understood may be among the most meaningful aspects of cultural exchange.
The exhibition therefore considers how “nourishing like with like” moves among family memory, folk knowledge, reverence for nature, anxiety about the body, and contemporary consumer culture. I bring my Chinese experience into a Western context, inviting Western audiences to encounter cultural memories through foods that may appear both familiar and unfamiliar. At the same time, I bring my experience of the West back into my own reconsideration of Chinese culture. Through ceramic illusion and transformation, the colour and luminosity of enamel, and the bodily presence of metal, these works open a multidirectional space for reflection: How do we understand the relationship between humanity and the natural world? Amid difference, misunderstanding, and uncertainty, how might we learn to approach one another again?
The exhibition at Taoxichuan in Jingdezhen marks the beginning of this project’s continued development. The works will be expanded and presented in the future.
Jewellery Work
