Year: 2026
Medium: Installation
Materials: Painted wooden structure, black soil, sound and scent
Dimensions: 85 × 65 × 25 cm
Sound loop: 00:59
The Matchbox Cannot Hold the Earth takes the form of a hand-painted enlargement of a Chinese safety-match box, expanded to bodily scale. Its lid reproduces the Double Happiness (囍) character found on the original packaging. The closed wooden structure is filled with black soil, which presses through the seams and accumulates around its edges.
At irregular intervals, sounds of dry friction and falling soil emerge from within, suggesting that the concealed material continues to shift. The smell of earth extends the installation beyond its visible boundaries. Although the interior remains largely inaccessible, its contents register through weight, leakage, sound and scent. The matchbox becomes a permeable container, unable to separate what it holds from the traces gathering around it.
