Night marks the beginning of my Night Practice which emerged when I developed an uncontrollable desire to write poems in darkness at night during episodes of my postpartum depression. The night emancipated me and gave birth to my Cixousian écriture féminine. What kindled the making of Night was an incident that uncovered the pervasive women-trafficking across present day China starting from a town called Xuzhou, where a mentally fraught woman with her neck chained and teeth pulled out were found in a hut annexed to the house where her self-proclaimed “husband” and 8 sons live. This incident not only brought about nation-wide outrage, but also my awareness of women’s collective and connected suffering. The hollowness of her gum and her wrought womb bruised me deeply and hence my awakening: Self preservation is not enough. Women must tell each other’s stories. 4 poems were written in response to the incident and the perennial violent misogyny in Chinese history, ruminating from the voice of the mother that we all are, calling for the daughters aborted, murdered and missing, ending with the image of the baby towers that haunt us with cries muffled and engulfed in darkness.

To the question "where is poetry?", early Irish texts suggested as an answer "i ndorchaidhéta" - literally, in darkness^[1]. The multimedia installation Night points to a similar inspiration and notion of darkness as paradoxical site of emotional illumination and possible emancipation. An atmosphere of the night is enabled by a wooden ceiling structure covered with indigo-dyed fabric that has been strenuously pounded with egg-white over a period of nine months by the Dong women of China. Screened under this artificial darkness is a film developed based on those 4 poems. The multimedia exhibition attempts to concoct a nocturnal theater that makes manifest my inner poetic vision and humanitarian concerns. Bewitched into a peculiar night mode, the viewers are prompted to reflect on the meaning of darkness: the unfathomable darkness of the womb that harbors life and wisdom; the veiled labor of women; those that are hidden, confined, abandoned, aborted, those who have never managed to weather the night and glimpse a beam of light.