In our lives, we experience many difficult moments. When that occurs, we often look to others for help. But we may not want to risk burdening others, or appear vulnerable. It becomes even harder to bear if our cries are met with indifference. Yet we cannot keep all our sadness inside, and risk destroying ourselves from within. So what do we do when we go through trauma?

Maybe we tell our troubles to the Bittermelon.

 

The bittermelon has been lovingly nicknamed “the gentleman’s vegetable” because when cooked, it keeps its bitterness to itself without affecting the foods cooked alongside it. By writing to the bittermelon your frustrations, your secret sorrow, your unspeakable agony, you unburden yourself without harming anyone. Its silent stillness comprehends and accepts you and all your hardships, without judgement, without mockery. Even when it doesn’t console you with a warm embrace or a visit to your home, we would find peace in knowing that “The bittermelon understands.”

我們生活裏會遇到很多難受的事情，我們希望向別人傾訴，但我們不想加重他人的負擔，也不想表現軟弱，若我們求助的呼聲受到漠視，我們會更感難受。但我們亦不能把一切隱藏於心，形成鬰結，那我們痛苦的時候該怎麼辦?

也許我們可以把煩惱告訴苦瓜。

 

苦瓜又稱「君子菜」，因為烹調的時候，它不會把苦味染到鍋中其他食物身上。你若把自己的憤慨丶秘密的憂傷丶不能言傳的痛苦告訴苦瓜，你會得到宣泄而不會傷害他人。它會安靜沉黙地了解你的困境，無條件接受你，不會批判你丶嘲笑你。 雖然它不會擁抱你或到你家裡探訪，但你心裡會感到安慰，因為《苦瓜明白的》。

 

 

 

Surrounding the installation, there are four clear acrylic stands with drawers filled with trouble papers in 5 different shades of green. The idea is to allow the public to choose the shade that best represents their troubles; the darker the shade, the more overwhelming their troubles. They would write their troubles down on the chosen paper, curl it with the writing on the inside and slip it into one of the empty tubes of the installation. Once the papers have been slipped in, they will not be removed or read (by the public nor the artist), allowing the participants' troubles to remain private. Drawing from the psychodynamic theory of containment, this allows participants to release their burdens to this Bittermelon in a creative and healthy manner. As the tubes fill up, we would see how many others are currently undergoing hardships and gain insight on how the people of Hong Kong view their problems. Hopefully this moves others to be more aware of all the unspoken pain that exists outside of themselves and instill a greater sense of sensitivity and compassion for those around them.

 

The installation is built using pinewood, plywood, acrylic glass, aluminum, and polystyrene plastic. From concept to finish, it spanned a period of 10 months. The piece consists of mainly 2 3/4'' pinewood sheets cut and sanded into bitter melon shapes, then painted and covered in an adhesive photo of a bitter melon taken by poet Leung Ping-kwan. These pinewood sheets are then screwed to a custom-built aluminum frame. 8 semi-oval 6mm acrylic glass plates covered in translucent adhesive of the same photo are secured by metal clamps onto the pinewood. The polystyrene plastic pill bottles in 2 different sizes (26mm & 36mm dia) are adhered onto the acrylic glass and to each other in a three-dimensional shape of a bitter melon. Pill bottles are also stacked, making long rods, and adhered to the middle of the 2 pinewood sheets in order to fill out the bitter melon shape. All this is secured on top of a plywood base by the aluminum frame in the middle. The piece weights about 200lbs including the base. Tools used to build the installation include Bosch drill/screwdriver, X-acto knives, glue gun, clear craft glue, sandpaper... Software used during the process and to make the finished product include Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, Sketchup and Microsoft Office. 

See the Making of Slideshow

 

 

Over a thousand trouble papers were filled out and placed into the installation over a span of 20 days. Many tubes contained two or more troubles. The shade of green that the majority of people used was the second lightest shade. This was not due to the fact that most of the public did not believe their troubles to be as overwelming. But it was due to the fact that this shade was on top and was most convenient for the participants to pick up. I rearranged the placement of the shades for the latter half of the exhibition period, it was then that more people chose the darker colour I had placed on top. The general public of Hong Kong, and foreign visitors were quick to accept the idea, to participate and had an overall positive response.

This was a deeply personal project dedicated to my late father, and I hope it helped others as much as this process of creating, designing and building "The Bittermelon Understands" has helped me.