Angela Chien-Chia Hou

In my RCA degree show, I am presenting my imagined ‘Tear Ecology’, by adapting water circulation into the cycle of tears, to create a poetic environment which nourishes inanimate objects with tears.  

Seeing objects as my friends, I often talk and listen to them.

A needle feels sorry for piercing through fabric.

A screw is feeling hurt when drilling through woods.

An empty shell is longing for completion.

While water nourishes the animate beings in the world; tears nourish the inanimate objects that are formed from the debris of our sorrow. Being nourished with tears, these inanimate objects have become ‘tear lives’. As a tear life, each of them has lost its functions for existence, desperately seeked the shape of themselves and the place they belong, and consequently transformed into new beings.

By projecting emotions upon inanimate objects, I transform them into non functioning tear lives, and find them a home to inhabit in the landscape of tears. I believe that everything has a soul, a desire of transformation, and a longingness for a sense of dependency. I wish my Tear Ecology to resonate with my audiences’ empathy with the Tear Life which has lost reasons for living, and inspire them to live in a different shape of life.