2018
Medium: yarn and powder coasted steel
Dimension: 14MW X14MD X3.5MH
Part of The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea
A 10-day contemporary art festival
Southdown Industrial Area, Mississauga, Ontario
Curated by Christine Shaw
Produced by the Blackwood Gallery
www.workofwind.ca
In The House Sets the North, 30,000 metres of threads constructs a translucent courtyard. Viewers are invited to walk into the work to engage with the space, stimulating ideas and memories through the embodied experience of thread walls.
Designed based on the traditional Chinese courtyard, which aligns with the cardinal directions, Yan’s installation explores how the symbolism of the four directions and the four seasons resonates across spiritual, cultural, geographical, and cosmological scales. The House Sets the North questions how we must reckon with experiences of isolation and confusion in an age of rapid environmental shifts that impact not only the notion of “home” (with significant seasonal changes, resource-based conflict, and environmental disasters increasingly driving global migration), but humanity’s attitude towards our planetary future. Recognizing our dependence on planets and stars for navigation, guidance, and assurance, The House Sets the North brings together personal narratives of displacement, public and private space, recognition and alienation, with the celestial and interplanetary concerns of a changing world. Anchored in Lakeside Park, the structure nonetheless appears precarious, reflecting the ongoing intensity of human impact on the earth, and the delicacy of our continued presence here.