Kong Mo

The work was inspired by the Chinatown lighting store's window display and the fortune teller shop's domestic but commercial interior design, the work reversed the process of modern architecture process, it redefined common space based on
functionality, The personal stations with survival purposes in the future.

The series of furniture/sculptures reference the overlapping data points of two-line graphs–International Trade Rates and Natural Disaster Rates from 2009 to 2020–with each section providing a solution for shelter during ecological collapse and economic
isolation. Inspired by the American survival bunker companies, the sculpture is divided into seven pieces of furniture/architecture, which share the functions of food storage, temperature regulation, energy recycling, and species preservation. The heavy and sturdy structure makes them a shield against natural disasters, while the sculptures can be freely combined like modules, redefining the space by merging functions. This work also incorporates research on atmo-orientalism in American history and scientific
colonialism. As a scent and experience-focused work, it is hard to document through photographs alone. The work recreates the “Chinese Smell” described in Otis Gibson‘s book “Chinese in America” (1877); however, the ingredients used also come from the Western corporate biopiracy of Asia. Since the 18th century, smell has been used as a tool to racialize Asian Americans and limit the expansion of Chinese neighborhoods specifically in urban areas. The utilization of smell in this work also highlights the
invisibility of this racial history.

New Yorkool as the office of the incorporation, the whiteboard marked the two charts “International trade rate” and “Natural disaster rate” from 2009 to 2020, it also functions as a plant climber and dehydrated fruit shelves. The text on the large glass windows was the product manual of the 7 furniture pieces, the middle window was MinKwon Center's free immigration services written backward only can be read from outside of the museum, as a symbol of inclusivity.

While investigating the truthfulness of "American Honey made by American Bees" labels, The first time honey bees came to the North American continent was in 1622 with European immigration.
This species’s introduction and honey trade is highly synchronized and associated with the history of human immigration. Due to the China-US trade war, the Chinese honey is shipped to surrounding countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia to avoid the unfair tariff, and then relabeled for export to the US. The honey smuggling revealed the untrustworthiness of the labels, and asked whether we should re-examine our prejudices against
immigrant culture? After working with RISD's lab to examine pollen samples, we found that the exclusively Chinese pollen Polygonaceae was contained in the “American Honey.” This ChineseAmerican honey, born of stowaways and transplants, begs the question: how much is culture altered during transplantation?

This is an installation blurring fact and fiction, art and science, truth and near-truth, it is an immersive installation exploring a not-so-distant future in which China and the United States are in the midst of a political Cold War, echoed externally by an atmospheric antagonism rendered by climate change that has turned China and the U.S. into the hot and cold centers of the world.