Li Yueyang 李岳陽

Time Spent (2014) is a replica of a prison bed where Li Yueyang (Ah Yang) slept for eight and a half years. After his release, Ah Yang spontaneously decided to reverse-engineer the bed with the help of another former inmate and by relying on the muscle memory from years of living in a confined space. The two collaborated to recall together the height and sensation of sitting and lying on this object. The result of this dialogue is a facsimile representing one berth of a bunk bed inside the prison cell. This artwork was initially created simply as a personal project without the intention of exhibiting it publicly in an art space. The unlikely journey of Ah Yang’s foray into artistic expression was heavily inspired by his friendship with the conceptual artist Li Jinghu. The childhood friends had taken divergent paths since growing up in the same village in Dongguan, an area that has eventually become a complex frontline in the Pearl River Delta’s emergence as a ‘factory of the world’. Over the years, Li Jinghu has been encouraging a community of non-artists to engage in artmaking, to rethink subjectivities, artistic ownership, and personal and collective expressions in relation to the region’s dramatic transformation into a global manufacturing hub.