Nomadic Love(2025, 2026)
1. 我爱你, 사랑해, 愛してる
2025.11.27 About 7:10 a.m.
3 videos(digitalized) 9s/4s/2s, color, sound
我爱你
사랑해요
あいしてる
1. Love Language
On a Thursday morning, I said “I love you” in three different languages.
But I realized that the video in my mother tongue was actually the longest (9 seconds). It seemed that, before I spoke, I hesitated for quite a while. The Korean clip was the second longest (4 seconds). After many years of study, the language has become much more familiar to me—still not as natural as my mother tongue, yet somehow less embarrassing. But the Japanese clip was the shortest (2 seconds), and it ended the most decisively. When I said “I love you” in Japanese, I sounded the most confident. Perhaps this was because, while filming in Japanese, I wasn’t really thinking about love itself, but rather about how to pronounce the words correctly.
It seems easier for me to say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I hate you” in a foreign language. But as a language becomes more familiar, the distance between emotion and words grows smaller which makes me feel more embarrassed.
I recorded three times and finally chose the very first test take. Perhaps that unprepared, unrehearsed, hazy, and clumsy state was the most embarrassing—and precisely for that reason, it deserved to be presented.
2. Love Language
Whether in one’s mother tongue or a foreign language, whether local or foreign, everyone has their own language of love. And the phrase “I love you” inevitably carries different meanings for each person—because we all grow up in different families and experience different forms of love.
What kind of love can I offer to others? And what kind of love language can I speak? And what kind of love and love language, do I hope to receive? At the very least, I don’t want to prove my love endlessly, nor pretend that I don’t love. I imagine a kind of love that exists in dynamic balance.
Can I understand and accept the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind another person’s love language? Can I avoid blaming their anxiety, wounds, and anger on myself?
And for myself—can I let go of past anxieties, doubts, and anger, remain patient, and learn to listen to another person’s love language?
(If love, as people say, is patient and kind.)
2. I Love You for 840 Times
2026
7min 38s
Video(digitalized), color, sound
Click to watch the full video
I repeatedly write “我爱你(I love you)” on my own palms in my mother language(Chinese) until I could no longer bear the pain and exhaustion. I record the entire process in which “I love you” appears and disappears.
Writing sweet words—or secret words—on the palm is one of the small, intimate gestures between people in everyday life. While the palm is a site that is at once private and fragile, yet with elasticity and resilience, becomes a place where emotion is written, revealed, and erased.
This work is also rooted in my personal experience. Consciously or unconsciously, I repeatedly enter long-distance and cross-cultural relationships, as if practicing a form of nomadic love. When love occurs, I choose to give my all; yet after truly letting go, I am also surprised by the detachment of my own. But at the end of the day, I still choose to try to preserve a certain courage to love — both the courage to love, and the courage to be loved.
Love repeatedly emerges and disappears, while the palm that gives or receives love remains.
I will love you for 840 times. I will love for 840 times.
On a Thursday morning, I said “I love you” in three different languages.
But I realized that the video in my mother tongue was actually the longest (9 seconds). It seemed that, before I spoke, I hesitated for quite a while. The Korean clip was the second longest (4 seconds). After many years of study, the language has become much more familiar to me—still not as natural as my mother tongue, yet somehow less embarrassing. But the Japanese clip was the shortest (2 seconds), and it ended the most decisively. When I said “I love you” in Japanese, I sounded the most confident. Perhaps this was because, while filming in Japanese, I wasn’t really thinking about love itself, but rather about how to pronounce the words correctly.
It seems easier for me to say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I hate you” in a foreign language. But as a language becomes more familiar, the distance between emotion and words grows smaller which makes me feel more embarrassed.
I recorded three times and finally chose the very first test take. Perhaps that unprepared, unrehearsed, hazy, and clumsy state was the most embarrassing—and precisely for that reason, it deserved to be presented.
2. Love Language
Whether in one’s mother tongue or a foreign language, whether local or foreign, everyone has their own language of love. And the phrase “I love you” inevitably carries different meanings for each person—because we all grow up in different families and experience different forms of love.
What kind of love can I offer to others? And what kind of love language can I speak? And what kind of love and love language, do I hope to receive? At the very least, I don’t want to prove my love endlessly, nor pretend that I don’t love. I imagine a kind of love that exists in dynamic balance.
Can I understand and accept the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind another person’s love language? Can I avoid blaming their anxiety, wounds, and anger on myself?
And for myself—can I let go of past anxieties, doubts, and anger, remain patient, and learn to listen to another person’s love language?
(If love, as people say, is patient and kind.)
2. I Love You for 840 Times
I Love for 840 Times
2026
7min 38s
Video(digitalized), color, sound
I repeatedly write “我爱你(I love you)” on my own palms in my mother language(Chinese) until I could no longer bear the pain and exhaustion. I record the entire process in which “I love you” appears and disappears.
Writing sweet words—or secret words—on the palm is one of the small, intimate gestures between people in everyday life. While the palm is a site that is at once private and fragile, yet with elasticity and resilience, becomes a place where emotion is written, revealed, and erased.
This work is also rooted in my personal experience. Consciously or unconsciously, I repeatedly enter long-distance and cross-cultural relationships, as if practicing a form of nomadic love. When love occurs, I choose to give my all; yet after truly letting go, I am also surprised by the detachment of my own. But at the end of the day, I still choose to try to preserve a certain courage to love — both the courage to love, and the courage to be loved.
Love repeatedly emerges and disappears, while the palm that gives or receives love remains.
I will love you for 840 times. I will love for 840 times.