Zhanchao Pan
Ash
Project Ash is a series of works that combines documentary video and multi-material installation, inspired by the artisit personal experience, to think and study the meaning of death and the relationship between life and death.
The installation consists of 11 bottles and a recorded video. I first collected 11 different objects, and then took photos with Polaroid to record what they looked like before they were set on fire. I used polaroid emulsion lift method to turn the photos into a translucent look, and burned them into ashes one after another. I recorded the burning process and made it into a complete video. Then, I sealed the ashes of these 11 items and their transparent photos in 11 glass bottles which are like the urns of the objects, and the Polaroid photos are like their posthumous photos, but it seems that we can no longer see their original appearance clearly in the photos in the glass bottles. As if death will dilute traces of existence: the same glass bottles, the same black wreckage, and many of them are even unrecognizable from what they looked like before they were burned.