Reborn
2019
Mud, solid, leaves, paper, plastic garbage
A collaborated project on land art with local artists based in Maastricht, part of the International Land-Art Maastricht 2019 (IL-AM 2019).
After researching land art, My friend, Marina Aróstegui and I decided to make a land art project, Reborn, addressing the environmental issue. I came up with the idea of a crime scene and I also wanted to respond to the mass consumption and manufacture that causes mass waste all around the world.
We think we use them for making a better life, but we actually are suiciding.
Human
We create, constructing, consuming.
We use them and take them for granted.
We don’t restrain the quantity of use.
We are declining their lifetime.
We deserved it.
Nature
reborn to something non-nature anymore
We are not going to live with nature anymore because
you see, here is a miniature of the world, a crime scene.
Reborn, a baby position.
Suicide, an ongoing process, still.
A crime scene
Murderer(s): Mc, Nike, Dove, Channel, H&M (human, factories, and companies)
Victim(s): Mother Nature
Suspect(s): Human
Witness(s): Us
Physical evidence: plastic and garbages.
*No need police tape because this murder case happens everywhere in the world.
On the land art opening day, we talked and explained to many artists what our ideas and thoughts were. I felt really grateful to have this opportunity to show what idea I have to the “artists”. People passed by our work, they stopped and observed what is going on here.
Why are those brands?
Mc, Dove, H&M, Channel, Nike, they are the most producers that provide different products to people. And we chose those brands because we think those are easy to identify, iconic, and recognizable.
We draw those brand icons on the evidence labels(the yellow things on the ground) and next to each label has one garbage\plastic along with it. Because they are the evidence of this crime scene.
So...what is going on here?
People say they saw a baby and a negative shape of a dead body beside.
Is she sleeping?
Is she dead?
Is he dead?
Are they in love?
Are they still alive?
I am wondering why people directly think the relief\positive figure is female and the negative one more like a male. The relief one, I made the mode from Mariana. I think about it deeply, it makes sense that it is SHE because we always call MOTHER nature, and we are all the children of nature.
For me, look at the relief\positive figure, she is asleep, like a baby in the mother’s belly. She is still new in the world, she is still curious about what is going on around her. The negative figure fell asleep, perhaps will not get up anymore, he stayed like that position for too long. It has been a long time since he was there.
He probably passed away, but no one buried him…
They both connected to the ground, the land we live on, the mother nature.
I think what we really want to deliver to people is simply being grateful for what we have, and not to be the murderer.
Reborn, 2019, Ping Ho
Model: Marina Aróstegui
IL-AM is the abbreviation of International Land-Art Maastricht. The IL-AM is a foundation that uses land-art to raise up awareness of the beautiful nature and their surroundings.
Land-Art, also referred to as Earthworks or Earth art, is an art form that creates directly in the landscape, using natural materials such as soil, rocks, twigs, organic media, and water. One thing I am fascinated about it is that after a couple of months, the artworks that artists will disappear by themselves since all the materials are from nature, they will return back to their mother, nature. Therefore, it might also look different as time goes because the water will flow and the wind will blow and might cause the appearance of the specific site change. As a result, most of the Land art pieces will be documented using photographs and videos, or maps which could exhibit in a gallery.
Speical thanks to Ricardo Chozas
All photographs taken by me.