On January 23rd, with a text message informing me of the flight cancelation, luggage packing stopped instantly, and the air dust crystallized into future memories. This belated homeward journey – the absence of time and the waiting for an unknown time evokes Qian’s imagination of this homeland to which she does not belong and the search for her own identity.

Qian places herself in a room without any time reference or electronic communication, leaving only a watch that had stopped long ago at 5:10 am or pm of a certain year and month. The windows are covered in tin foil, the heavy drapes cut off the light from the outside, and the faint sound of the window is the only way she can vaguely determine the time. She wakes up, writes, reads, smokes, eats a simple meal, sleeps, and waits in a cycle in this room. Only the infrared camera, set to the date of January 1, 2020, records her daily routine in this isolated room for 14 days without interruption.

1月23日，隨著一班航班取消的短信通知，打包行李的動作停滯在瞬間，空氣中泛起的塵埃如晶體般凝結進日後的記憶。這場遲到的歸途——無法再抵達的時間缺失以及對未知時間的等待——喚起了韓倩對這片並沒有歸屬感的故土的想像和對自我身份的尋覓。

韓倩將自己置於沒有任何時間參考和電子通訊的房間中，只留下一塊早已停在某年某月的不知是上午還是下午的五點十分的手錶。窗戶被錫箔紙貼滿，厚重的窗簾隔絕了室外的光線，窗外微弱的聲響是她能模糊判斷時間的唯一依據。她在這間房內循環起床、寫作、閱 讀、抽菸、吃簡單的食物、睡覺、等待。日期被設定成 2020 年 1 月 1 日的紅外線相機不間斷地錄製她在這個隔絕房間內14天的日常。

Han Qian was born in Wuhan, China and now lives and works in Wuhan. She received her B.A in Accademia di belle arti di Roma, Italy and M.A in École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris, Paris, France. Han Qian’s articles have appeared in LEAP, Boyan Art, Jiazazhi, Special edition Project, ARTBBS, AnayaPost, and other media. Participated in the 2022 residency program at Goethe-Institut Beijing in collaboration with Cache Space; has given lectures and screenings for schools and institutions such as Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Goethe-Institut Beijing, He Art Museum, West Bund Museum; Jiazazhi; shortlisted for the 2022 OCAT Research-Based Curatorial Project in Beijing.

Han Qian’s work as well as reflecting on individual perception and identity memory through multiple times and the threads of history. Attempting to present her creative projects as a constant journey between the past and the present, searching for the possibility of symbiosis and dialogues with the external world and inner experience. The artist often works with her video through photographs, documents as well as writing, the act of collecting and textual writing is a recurring metaphor in her creative practice, and the search for different perceptions of source time always pulls in her writing. The artist employs various mediums such as video, installation, performance, and text.

Her current work revolves around the context of her three-generational family history, examining the genealogy of natural resources, the political discourses behind this historical narrative, and the fates of the individuals who inhabited it.