HAN MENGYUN : Night : Night

Night

2022

Installation: Dong fabric, wood;

single-channel video, 5’20”, color, B&W, stereo sound, loop

Installation view, Night, esea contemporary (formerly CFCCA), Manchester 2022 © Han Mengyun

Night marks the beginning of Han Mengyun's Night Practice which emerged when she developed an uncontrollable desire to write poems in darkness at night during episodes of her postpartum depression. The night emancipated her and gave birth to her 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 Han's awareness of women’s collective and connected suffering. The hollowness of her gum and her wrought womb bruised the artist deeply and hence her 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 short film developed based on those 4 poems. The multimedia exhibition attempts to concoct a nocturnal theater that makes manifest the artist's 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.

Yet the night is not entirely terrifying as it has also given birth to poetry, as hinted at in Han's anthology of poems published as part of the exhibition: the nightly presence of the moon suggests a possibility, even if she has never been fully seen.

[1]“An Old-Irish Tract on the Privileges and Responsibilities of Poets.” Ériu 13 (1942): 38.

Director/artist: Han Mengyun

Cinematographer:Alan Cunningham

Voiceover:Lu Yi