Yuanzhuo Peng

My work revolves around the tension between “presence” and “the unspeakable.” I use image, sound, and physical objects to transform feelings that are difficult to capture in language into traces that can be seen and heard.

My works usually come from long periods of waiting and slow accumulation. I do not force production; I allow ideas to settle inside until they find their own way out. I believe some experiences do not need to be explained, only presented. My video works often use calm voiceover and restrained rhythms, allowing poetry to reveal itself in time.

In exhibitions, I often bring physical objects from the videos back into the gallery, placing them next to the screen: a stone, a few coins. They do not explain the images, nor are they explained by them. They exist simply as objects, waiting to meet the viewer’s gaze. I believe that sometimes silence is closer to the truth than language.

Single-channel video, colour, sound, 4 min 15 sec

Objects: stone, coins

I use my voice to calmly describe what I saw and what I thought I saw. I insist that there is a barrier between language and reality, so I choose to use multiple media to reconstruct the same event. Through this, I try to put a feeling that is hard to express into words. Not to explain it, but to let it be heard and seen. I want this act of “speaking” to be an attempt in itself, one that contrasts with silence while also coexisting with it.

Time is anchored by a weather forecast. A voice decides to go to the Scottish Highlands. It sees more and more, and the things it sees become increasingly mixed, until it can no longer tell which are real and which are imagined. In the end, nothing is found.

The narration in the video is quiet and restrained. The narrator attempts to describe what he encountered along the way, but gradually he senses that the act of describing is itself changing what he sees. Language, while trying to approach reality, is also creating new distances. He cannot be sure whether he is recording or inventing. He does not intend to resolve this difficulty. He simply continues to describe, until describing itself becomes an event.

In the exhibition, the stone and the two coins that appear in the video are placed next to the screen. They do not speak, nor do they interpret the image. They are simply things I once saw and then brought back, placed here as physical evidence that bypasses interpretation. The stone is not a symbol. The coins are not metaphors. They are objects themselves, with weight, temperature, and surface texture. They do not explain the video, nor are they explained by it. They are simply there, like traces washed up on a shore, waiting to meet the viewer’s gaze. Their presence suggests one thing: that some things do not need to be understood. They only need to be seen. Sometimes, silence is closer to the truth than language.

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