Coal & Ash Drawings
Look on My Works!
A fragile ash almost disappears
Cigar ash, inkjet compositing on paper, 2025 — inspired by Shelley’s Ozymandias
Growing up in Jiangxi, coal was part of daily survival—fuel for cooking and warmth, a witness to the endurance and decline of my hometown. Later, I turned cigar smoking into a ritual of teenage desire and resistance, inspired by my idealistic reading of Che Guevara.
In this work, I use cigar ash as both material and metaphor, letting its fragility mark the paper like two ghostly legs. The title, Look on My Works, quotes Shelley’s Ozymandias—a reminder that all power and monuments turn to dust. This drawing is both a memorial and a question: how do we hold memory when everything drifts away?
