Huacheng Xi
Identity Reliquaries
Prompt: Get to know a partner through interviews and conversations, and transform their stories, memories, and personality into an Identity Reliquary including a container, seven symbolic objects, and a portrait representing your partner.
Its appearance is a simple white box, which is intentional, representing how Eric sees our daily life, boring and monotonous. Through the hole, we can see a monster full of eyeballs trying to break out of the box, which serves as a portrait of Eric. In my view, Eric is someone who is always seeking fun and excitement and can’t stand boredom, I portrayed Eric as a monster because his interests and the videos he shared— focused on politics and the darker sides of society—revealed a unique, complex personality that contrasted with my own. Inside the reliquary box, each object symbolizes a part of his inner world, the spikes show the external pressures that confine him, the heart reflects his emotional distance from family, the hand represents his urge to escape boredom, the spanner expresses his desire for control and action, the clip shows his logical, organized mind, the knife signifies his wish to break through limitations, and the axe embodies his determination to reshape his ordinary life.