Kaixiang Zhang


Momme III


resin, mother’s hair and earring
60 × 30 × 30 cm


This work captures the most visceral reflection of my encounter with the spider. Tracing its crystalline limbs back to the body, I found the hazy darkness of the abdomen triggered a poignant memory of my mother’s hair. As her strands turn from jet-black to silver, one wonders if the home she wove is, like the spider’s web, the very crystallisation of her spent life force. I use this piece as a vessel to enshrine a lock of my mother’s hair— a physical fragment of her being. Since childhood, I have often imagined the passing of my loved ones before falling asleep, a thought that always brought me to tears. Perhaps this was the most direct way a child, still unversed in the ways of the world, could rehearse and prepare for the ultimate subject of mortality.