Fangyuan Li
袁方黎 - 李芳缘
1. It's 5 pm and in an hour it will be 5:10. I work in the factory from day to night.
2. The machines were roaring, the assembly line was spinning, and I looked like a screw stuck in it. I mean, I don't know where to go after hours.
3. Once I saw the dresses we had made were sold in a shop. Customers picked them up, smiled or threw them away as trash. I didn't know how long I had been watching them.
4. I left notes with my name in the pockets of the dresses. Will this remind anyone of me?
5. I still work in the factory from day to night, from day to night. The good thing is, my dresses wander around the world and have another life for me.
If I had another life 2022
( Installation view in AMP Gallery, London. 04/2022
Digital print and collage of poem on delivery board, 5 pieces as a story, 420mm×297mm each. )
The story behind the story
This project is inspired by a poem which is written by a Chinese poet worker in China called Xia Wu. I was deeply shocked by her work, I never thought I can be loved by a stranger girl from a different community. In our daily life, we shop a lot, but we barely think about who makes the clothes we wear, nor through touching, and wearing the clothes, we are connected with some workers from far away, maybe from less developed countries.
I want to remind people do not ignore workers' situation by this project, and to say, unacquainted girl, Xia Wu, I love you too.
What is this note?
Last winter, my friend found a note with three Chinese characters in a cloth pocket in a London vintage shop. The characters are 文献兰（Xianlan Wen）.
I imagined if this is a name, then who is this person, and what is the relation of this person with the cloth? How was this note travel to the UK?
Nothing is impossible in imagination! It can be a name of a worker!
Then my character has her name. Xianlan Wen secretly put her name into the clothes she made, and it flowed to Uk, then I found it.
Reality and imagination are overlapped because of this little note.
And this helps me develop my next experiment for this project.
360 degree images details
