Every Grain Comes After Hard Toil
粒粒皆辛苦
Central Park Series
Hand make wooden cratebox with backlit vinyl print light box, tennis balls 93.5×73.5×5.5 inch (235x187x14cm)
2022-2023

Every Grain Comes After Hard Toil
粒粒皆辛苦
Central Park Series
Inkjet print
2022
56×70 inch (142x178cm), edition of 3 (+2AP)
40×50 inch (100x127cm), edition of 9

Who knows that on the dining plate,
Every single grain comes after hard toil?
— Traditional Chinese Verse

For the Chinese diaspora, the tennis court is often viewed as a symbol of elite aspiration—a dream my mother never dared to entertain until her arrival in Canada. This work captures the friction between newfound leisure and an ingrained survival instinct. In the pursuit of this sport, “flyaway” balls are often dismissed or forgotten; however, for a generation defined by the memory of poverty and hunger, nothing is ever truly discarded.

The title draws from a classic verse used for generations to teach the sanctity of food and the sin of waste. Here, the gesture of the figure is a deliberate echo of Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners. By transposing the 19th-century French peasant’s toil onto a modern North American tennis court, the piece explores how frugality remains a life-shaping reflex—a cultural practice of “saving grain” that persists regardless of improved living conditions.

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