Tianqing Xu

Wax, metal, wood, 3D-printed polylactic acid (PLA), found objects, and 12 photographs.

“The classroom, with its orderly rows of desks and recurring bells, is both gentle and unyielding. As an educational space, it offers warmth, protection, and the conditions for growth, while quietly shaping and standardizing those within it.

Here we learn how to speak, behave, and become legible to the world. At the same time, hesitation, difference, and the parts of ourselves that resist definition are gradually set aside.

These disappearances unfold slowly over time. When we look back, what no longer follows us? Am I still the one I once was?”