Rachel Hsu: The Heart Bears a Blade
First Friday Opening: 10/7/22 6:00-10:00 pm
Exhibition on view: 10/7 -10/29/22
The Heart Bears a Blade, attends to the entanglement of violence and tenderness. Made of the Chinese characters 刃 (the edge of a knife or blade) and 心 (heart), the word 忍 (endure, bear, tolerate, restrain) lays open the emotional and physical aches of negotiating the contradictions of American life. In the midst of illness, shootings, police brutality, and hate crimes, we too hold open doors for one another, coo at babies, clap each other on the back, and hug heart-to-heart.
The Heart Bears a Blade draws the tactile and metaphoric qualities of language to the fore by tying mental exertion to physical movement. How can we better sink into the feeling of our substance, which is more than the weight of our bodies? How can we better attend to our entangled pain and joy? How can we be a little bit softer?
Rachel Hsu (b. 1992, Seattle, WA) is an interdisciplinary artist who works with visual art, language, and poetry.
She received an MFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2021 and a BFA in sculpture from Western Washington University in 2015. She currently resides in Philadelphia, PA.
She received an MFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2021 and a BFA in sculpture from Western Washington University in 2015. She currently resides in Philadelphia, PA.
Artist Statement: My mother has lived away from her homeland for 30 years and I now live 2,800 miles away from mine. One’s relationship to others and to places changes all the time and we must attend to, rather than avoid, flux. Yet, why do we yearn for something we know is not the same as in our memory or imagination?
My practice engages the yearning that emerges from distance and displacement, whether caused by physical separation, gradually growing apart from one another, or cultural and linguistic differences. My work is made of touch and tends to the aches of navigating violence and care, grief and joy, intimacy and longing. It is a body sinking into a bed, a writer’s hand traveling across paper, feet navigating terrain, lungs filling with air, your voice burrowing under my skin. Through the tactile and metaphoric essence of language, I call for viewers to submerge slowly into desire rather than regard it as a problem to be solved.
Loss and longing are intertwined, and to fully experience both requires time and endurance. Whether it is the labor demanded by language-learning and cultural assimilation or the acute pain that healing necessitates, my work urges mental exertion and emotional endurance to be felt in one’s body. Is it a bearable pain? How long have you been feeling this way? And how far yet to go?