Luggage

“Luggage” is a selection of suitcases from my own journeys as well as others. I’ve collected much luggage, starting with bundles of the 1920s. People move around and always carry their belongings in parcels or suitcases. So, the style and design of the luggage also represent the times in which people are situated.

I’ve collected luggage from the early war-time traditional Chinese bundles, 1920s Shanghai colonial-time suitcases, current-style backpacks, and trolley-wheel suitcases from nowadays, and memorialized all these in life-size bronze sculptures.

Then I hand-painted them with original colors, flowers, patterns, and designs, directly onto the bronze bags and suitcases. Monuments to which we travel and human movement in general reflect a flow of time, as well as a flow of social change and the flow of people’s tastes.

To date I have made 30 bronze suitcase sculptures, and my plan is to make 200 total unique pieces. When they are put together, one finds the traces of a grand history of people moving from one place to another.

Supplementary public listing: the 2008 Shanghai Biennale listing records the work as bronze, approximately 80 × 30 × 50 cm per piece, and separately notes a 30-piece sketch listing. Power Station of Art.