Panchatantra

2023
5-channel video installation, colour, silent, loop

artist stainless steel book stand, Indian Khadi Paper

Dimensions variable

The video installation Panchatantra is named after the eponymous ancient Indian collection of animal fables that has spread globally from India since 200 BCE and retold numerous times in more than 50 non-Indian languages. Inspired by the cross-cultural literary migration embodied by the Indian fables, Han Mengyun narrates disparate conceptions and representations of mirror and varied ideas of the mirror image through 5 videos, which are titled respectively The Origin, Dream, Book, In Praise of the Moon, and Le Désir.


Han Mengyun's research on the inner visual logic of ancient manuscripts has taken her beyond traditional media such as painting and drawing. The video installation Panchatantra is her attempt to extend the word-image interplay peculiar to the book to contemporary media which disrupts conventional ways of viewing moving-image. In the installation, 5 book- stands designed by the artist are scattered in the space. The videos are projected downwards from the ceiling onto the two pieces of Indian Khadi handmade paper placed on the bookstand. The change in the viewing posture aims to evoke the forgotten/or erased cultural and spiritual memory that gave birth to the image. The pixels of the video also become the grain of fiber because of the paper receiving the projection, blurring the medial boundary between video and book, thereby creating a synaesthetic experience. 

The Origin

2023

film still in installation

19'59"

The Origin, as the opening chapter of the sequence, presents the universal motif for the creation of the world--clay. The artist documents the process of herself and her daughter playing with clay, juxtaposing artistic creation and the creatiton of the world. To the artist, mother and daughter are mirrors to each other, reflecting the karmic interconnections between generations of women. 


Book کتاب

2023

film still in installation

6'46", loop

The ceaselessly flipping Book without words is the artist's tribute to Jorge Luis Borges and world literature that deeply inspired and enriched her. How a book is configured reflects how a culture perceives and conceives the world. The Book is a mirror of civilization.

 

Le Désir

2023

film still in installation

3'20"

Le Désir reveals mirror's complicity in power. The artist visited the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. When looking at the mirror, she saw the outer world through the windows behind her. The mirror is instrumental in capturing and confining the world inside the palace, doomed to endless duplication. Just as Jorge Luis Borge says:“Mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men.....Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe." (Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, 1940) 


In Praise of the Moon

2023

film still in installation

8'10"

In Praise of the Moon presents a collection of 11 poems written by Han Mengyun in recent years. Poetry is the mirror of the poet's mind. 

Dream

2023

film still in installation

5'43"

The artist explores her surrounding world as she takes the mirror that acts as a voyeuristic device. In the mirror, we see the world as a dream, lucid and surreal yet forever unattainable. The mirror placed inside the picture frame generates endless new images while being watched. 

Han Mengyun in Panchatantra