Fa He was born and raised in Huaian, Jiangsu, China and is a second-year MFA student. His research-based artworks discuss the possibilities and complexity that speaking two languages can lead to, in this case, English and Chinese. Fa seeks for the moments when the two languages “blend” into each other and the boundaries between them break down. Ambiguity is essential. In his video work Kunlun (Brother Order), 2017, he recites the poem Kunlun- to the tune of Nien Nu Chiao by Mao Zedong. When Fa translated it, he didn’t follow the traditional method — translating the meaning —but translated character by character. Then he read the translation into English with a Chinese accent. He discovered that he sometimes sounds as if he is saying something different than the words he was reading. To capture this ambiguity moment, he recorded the pinyin[1] he heard in his recitation and found a Chinese character for each phonetic notation. After that, he put these Chinese characters into Google translator to get the English translation. The new way of presenting the poem becomes an example of Fafalish.
Triggered by the frustration of living in a foreign land, Fa found a way to embrace and resolve it. But his work is more than this. The artist further questions what we all believe in and are used to, for instance, language. The knowledge is passed on by languages, but sometimes people don’t question whether it’s true or false. By constructing a new language and even a new way of thinking, Fa encourages us to question what we’ve learned to break down the norms and see the world from a different angle.The exhibition includes a video work and an installation with printed paper on the long wall and one of the middle columns in the library.
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