Silent Floaters
by Trevor Yeung

The show is about indicators. 


We use them to indicate things — like smoke reveals the movement of air currents in a room. But indicators are not like meters; they don’t give exact measurements.
Like in relationships, it’s hard to know exactly how close you are with friends.

(Personally, I’m struggling with the idea of friendship.)

Although I don’t really know how close we are, I sometimes try to measure if we are closer than other friends.
Or I observe the reaction of a test of our relationship.
But in so doing I put what we are at risk.

One isn’t supposed to make such things visible or speak about them.

So instead of using a human being, a mulberry tree is the subject of this exhibition.
The idea of using a mulberry doesn’t come from silk or paper making.
I have been feeding dry mulberry leaves to my pet tortoises.
It is from harvesting, drying, and now growing mulberry that I’ve come to understand the plant.

Silkworms folded from mulberry paper (Kozo) hang from a wooden bird-stand by a silk thread. A hand-painted origami gridded with mulberry juice in a wooden frame, like a hygrometer.
A mulberry leaf in the center of the room, drying, contracted.
Walls seem painted in slightly different colors from one another, confusing the beholder.

A potted mulberry tree on a stand, giving a shelter/home for non-existent silkworms. Purple marks on the ground next to the tree will be gone after a few rain showers. 


They are all indicators in the exhibition, raising the visitor’s awareness of things barely felt, from silkworms swinging subtly to slightly wrinkling paper,
from a dried leaf in a warm white room to an actual tree outdoors. 


Floaters.
The little worms that only we can see in our eyes. The silence is not about sound, since it is soundless. It is about what you don’t really want to share.
You judge in your own mind.

Trevor Yeung (b. 1988, Dongguan, China; lives and works in Hong Kong) explores the inner logics of closed systems and the ways in which such systems contain and create emotional and behavioral conditions. Recent exhibitions featuring Yeung’s work include a friendly distance, Blank Canvas, Penang, 2023; Des corps, des écritures, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2022; The Dream of the Museum, M+, Hong Kong, 2021; 15th Biennale de Lyon, 2019; 38th EVA International, Limerick, 2018; and 4th Dhaka Art Summit, 2018. Yeung’s work is in the collections of, among others, Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; Sculpture Park Cologne; and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.