Reflective Encounters

“The bike is a protagonist, an antagonist, a plot-device and a moving vehicle. Diana Gong’s ravelled exploration of memory and its dissociation is told from the point of view of a harmless creature with a flaccid nose. A two-legged, albeit nonhuman, darling. Black ink sketches come to life and skip over see-through paper, one, two, three – a jump and a thump and the meek-looking creature has already climbed a bike. But that’s not just any bike: its multi-coloured tassels and pink ringer instantly single it out as a special one. A memory of a bike, a collage of its silhouette carefully scissored out of a family photo perhaps. It seems hauntingly alluring for our small creature.

The bike is also a Proustian madeleine, the sweet-tasting object which brings one into contact with a distant past, with waves of forgotten sentiments washing over the one who remembers. With its first ride, the creature can already see the thread of reminiscence, tying itself into the mechanics of forgetting. Reimagined here as a complex sequence of gears and springs, the trip down memory lane can be taken only when cycling.”

— Savina Petkova