Sweetness is a clue, while sugar is the substance itself.
When we discuss “sugar” within the framework of contemporary art, it is often immediately tied to colonial history. However, the starting point of my work is somewhat different. I was born in the 90s in the Pearl River Delta in southern China, in a small town located at the estuary. My father was involved in sugarcane farming when I was young, until the early 2000s.
I remember going with him to the sugar factory at night. The factory released steaming wastewater into the canals, and it was hard to tell whether the thick smell of boiling sugar came from the chimneys and boilers or from the water that would eventually flow out to sea. The streetlights back then cast a deep yellow glow, and everything seemed coated in a haze of caramelized sugar.
Sugarcane and sugar became fragments of childhood memory for me—something with both a distinct smell and color. I didn’t return to them until I moved to the Americas. There wasn’t a single moment that triggered it. It may have been the overly sweet food in supermarkets, the constant discussion of obesity in the news, the flood of information on social media about sugar-free diets, my own attachment to sweets, or simply the urge to revisit childhood as I’ve grown older—most likely, a combination of all these things.