The Welwithschia No. 1

While creating Time-wrinkled Welwitschia, I take the Hundred Family Surnames and print them in a newspaper layout on newsprint, then layer the paper onto a wire mesh armature to simulate the texture and form of Welwitschia leaves. The newsprint bearing the Hundred Family Surnames serves as a "carrier of collective memory," while the wire mesh represents "framework and constraint." The process of adhering the two symbolizes the way individual identities are incorporated into civilizational narratives and shaped by media. The burn marks left by a torch function as visual symbols of violence and dissolution, while the plant ash represents both the residue of what has vanished and the possibility of new life. Together, they point to the dual nature of memory—its fragility and its indestructibility: words may be burned, but the identities and civilizational genes they carry continue in the form of ash. The cyan-green and gray-brown hues of acrylic paint not only evoke the weather-beaten colors of the Welwitschia in the desert but also infuse the paper material with the warmth of life, allowing cold industrial materials and fragile paper media to grow together into a "living memory lineage".