Wood: Boardwalk in the City

Wintersession 2014 - RISD

 

Wood, steel brackets, fishing wire.

 

It starts with a memory, an esoteric one, one that I don’t remember happening. I, as a 6-month old baby, barely able to stand, descend two flights of stairs. It continues with another memory, an experienced one this time. I climb Heaven’s Staircase of Huang Shan with treacherously high steps.

 

These memories form a narrative of how I have engaged with stairs, and the act of ascension and descending. By restructuring the tectonics of stairs with not-enough widths and impossible hanging treads, I attempt to weave them together with the two memories, told through third parties, and experienced first-hand. There is a random order that shifts the surfaces to form an essence of climbing and flight, to relate to the veil of memory. The unorthodox logic of these stairs is severed, with one half floating in space, and the other grounded in place. This separation both binds and splits the two halves, the inverse realms that each signifies.