Twining the Underneath — Qiaochu Guo

by Qiaochu Guo

Moxibustion is a therapeutic practice typical of Chinese medicine that consists of heating skin areas over acupuncture points or energy pathways by burning mugwort powder in order to achieve the resolution of a pathological event. A healing practice that treats the body in an anti-modern way: it requires to stop, rest, breathe, sleep, and sweat.

This series of objects blend the space and the body in a way that stimulates the senses, interpreting the experience and speculation of the moxibustion in body reparation. The moxibustion is the family medical practice for the artist, from which they treat and develop as trans-regional survivability and restorative stratefy. The project tries to inspire us to see the body in relation to its received environment, to examine how the plant-based medical treatment relates to family history, personal identity and the operation of social systems.


Collaborator on collages
Xiaoyuan Gao


BIO

Qiaochu Guo (they/them) are interested in how the established social structure influences the body experiences: alienation, abandonment, exhaustion and disease, which lead to their works playing with the autonomous transforming potential body of hacking, defeating, disrupting, and restoring as the strategies. Their work is not limited to a certain medium, and wishes to be conveyed in a sticky, thick, blurry, permeating way. They have shown works and presented at Van Abbemuseum, Framer Framed, Kunstloc Brabant and others, and performed at Flam #9, Worm, De Singel and Veem. 


This project is realized as part of “The Body is a Movement”, a project by Onomatopee and Baltan Laboratories.
During Design Week Public Program, Onomatopee and Baltan Laboratories will present the project with a talk on rethinking the importance of the body (and corporeity) in the contemporary cult of hyper-productivity.

So... is this getting serious?

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