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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation, © Kan Xuan
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Sigg Galleries, 209
Kan Xuan 闞萱
Looking, looking, looking for... 找呀找
2001
This video follows a spider that scurries across the naked bodies of a man and a woman. It runs over a face, enters a belly button, and moves across the bodies’ crevices. The body is portrayed as an unfamiliar landscape for the spider, and the sight of the creature on bare skin can provoke an array of sensations and emotions in the viewer: ticklishness, sensuality, disgust, amusement, and perhaps pity for the spider as it looks for a place to hide. The video’s soundtrack—a chant in a child-like voice—heightens the tension and the sense of intrigue. Kan Xuan’s short video works in the late 1990s and early 2000s often centre on details and personal encounters, magnifying the emotions that arise from common, everyday experiences. She developed this piece in response to the loneliness of modern life, using the spider, which is often seen in a corner and in its own web, as a symbol of loneliness. The soundtrack, featuring a song about looking for love, is inspired by a Japanese cartoon about a girl looking for her father. Between 2004 and 2010, Kan Xuan continued to explore questions of everyday life and objects in her work.
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