Verb List,  three-channel video installation
March 7-16, 2025
Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA 
photo documentation by Emily Schiffer 


Verb List is an accumulative found footage project that collects movements from Chinese and Chinese-diasporic moving image history. The gallery installation is a formal experiment of screens made from a mixture of locally sourced vines, as well as industrial materials such as window screen, hardware cloth, rice paper and bookbinding thread. The moving image collection process is a direct reference to Richard Serra's 1967 drawing, where a list of verbs is compiled in relation to oneself, material, place, and process. The installation is based on two ontological proposals -- firstly, that movements from fictional contexts can exist both in fabricated time as well as documentarian duration; second, that cultural identity can be approached from single units of action, movement and formal extractions. The project asks, what are the ontological implications of seeing oneself, or those like oneself on screen? and what does it mean to be surrounded by movements and actions of people who look like oneself?