Connie Zheng

Nine Suns

In the Chinese myth of Hou Yi and the ten suns, there were once ten suns, who would each cross the sky one by one. However, when all ten of the suns appeared in the sky at once and scorched the earth, the archer Hou Yi shot down nine of the suns, leaving just the one we have today. In reference to this myth and to the festival theme of Under the Same Sun, Nine Suns imagines a gentler transformation of the nine suns who fell from the sky, in the form of a modular outdoor garden installation consisting of nine circular planter tubs mounted on movable circular dollies painted to look like the suns shot down by Hou Yi. Each planter will contain popular Asian food plants and will be installed on top of a circular wooden disk bearing a sun pattern modeled after a celestial emblem found at a Bronze Age Chinese site. On the day of the festival, the nine planters — each painted a cheery yellow — will be arranged on Grant Avenue in a wavy line reminiscent of an undulating horizon. In the story of the ten suns, each sun turned into a three-legged raven as it fell from the sky; stenciled images of three-legged ravens will appear on the ground between the planters in order to connect them in a constellation and to create a sense of the ground as sky. We are often taught to look to the stars as the next frontier, yet it is the the artist’s hope that this installation might encourage viewers to spend more time tending to the earth we have as our home.

​

At the end of the festival, the planters will be moved to Kai Ming Head Start Preschool, for use in the school's outdoor education program. Because the planters will be installed on dollies with wheels, they will be mobile and easily configured into different arrangements depending on Kai Ming's needs. This feature was inspired by the reality of tight space in Chinatown as well as the interconnectedness of the community: because of the density of the neighborhood and its deep networks of support, many residents of the neighborhood are incredibly mobile, tracing numerous "orbits" a day as they go to school, work, run errands, see friends and family, and build lives with numerous nodes of connection. 

​

鄭韞欣  | 九個太陽——Nine Suns

在《后羿與十個太陽》的中國神話裡，上古時代曾有十個太陽每次一個輪番出現天際。然而，當十個太陽同時出現天上而使大地陷入焦灼時，弓箭手后羿擊落了其中九個，只剩下我們今天看到的那個太陽。參考這則神話與《在同一個太陽底下——Under the Same Sun》藝術節主題，《九個太陽——Nine Suns》想像著真有九個太陽從天而降的溫和轉變，其形式是模塊化的戶外花園裝置，由安裝在可移動的九個圓形花盆所組成。圓形小車被塗成看上去像是被后羿射下的太陽。每個花盆將種植本地流行的亞洲食用植物，並將安裝在一個圓形木盤的頂部，該木盤上有太陽圖案，仿照中國青銅時代遺址所出土的天體標誌。藝術節當天，九個花盆——每一個都漆成色彩歡快的黃色——將在格蘭特大道上排列成波浪狀，引發起伏地平線的聯想。在十個太陽的故事中，每個太陽從天上被射落的瞬間，都變成了一隻三足烏鴉，即中國神話中的「金烏」；金烏模板圖像將出現在花盆之間的地面上，連接成一個星座，並營造出一種天地相映之感覺。我們經常被教導要遙望星空胸懷宇宙，然而我更希望這件裝置作品可以鼓勵觀眾們投注更多的時間來關照我們作為家園的地球。

​

藝術節結束後，所有花盆將被轉移至啟明啟蒙學校 (Kai Ming Head Start Preschool)，用於學校的戶外教育項目。花盆將安裝在帶有輪子的推車上，因此可以移動，並且可根據啟明的需要輕鬆配置成不同的佈置。此功能的靈感來自於唐人街空間狹小的現實以及社區的相互聯繫：由於社區的密度及其深厚的支援網絡，該社區的許多居民流動性非常之大，每天都會沿著無數“軌道”並行——在此上學、工作、辦事、拜訪朋友與家人，並通過無數的人脈來構建生活。

​

About Connie Zheng

Connie Zheng is a Chinese-born artist, writer and experimental filmmaker based out of xučyun (Oakland, California). She works with maps, seeds, food, environmental histories, speculative fiction, field recordings and hand-drawn animation. Her projects frequently include participatory scenarios and seek to diagram dynamic relationships between human and more-than-human worlds. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, through venues such as the Asian Art Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Framer Framed (Netherlands) and Salt Beyoğlu (Turkey). She has received fellowships and awards from the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation, among other organizations, and her work is held in the collections of the Kadist Foundation and the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. She has published essays in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, Errant Journal and SFMOMA’s Open Space. She is currently a PhD student in Visual Studies at the University of California - Santa Cruz.

​

鄭韞欣 Connie Zheng 是中國出生、以屋崙（加州奧克蘭）為根據地的藝術家、作家兼實驗電影製作人。作品以含括地圖、種子、食物、環境歷史、推理小說、現場錄音以及手繪動畫為材料的藝術創作。她的項目經常出現參與式場景，並試圖描繪人類與非人類世界之間的動態關係。曾在亞洲藝術博物館、當代猶太博物館、荷蘭藝文空間 Framer Framed 以及Salt Beyoğlu土耳其現代藝術博物館等國內外單位展出作品與影片。曾獲舊金山灣區赫德蘭藝術中心(Headland Center for the Arts)、橡樹泉花園基金會(Oak Spring Garden Foundation)以及普芬基金會(Puffin Foundation)等組織的藝術獎學金與獎項，作品被卡蒂斯特藝術基金會(Kadist Foundation) 和斯坦福大學大衛·拉姆齊地圖中心(David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University) 所收藏。論文發表於《The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change》、《Errant Journal》以及舊金山現代藝術博物館SFMOMA的刊物《Open Space》。鄭韞欣目前在加州大學聖克魯斯分校視覺研究系進修博士學位。

​

This performance is part of The Nine Suns Dance Garden
Co-presented by Edge on the Square and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco  Supported by: Office of Economic and Workforce Development