Nomadic Love
2. I Love You for 840 Times
I Love for 840 Times
2026Videos(digitalized), color, sound
I repeatedly write “I love you” 840 times on each other’s palms in Chinese. This number 840 is derived from Erik Satie’s work Vexations — a piece of music about love and obsession, whose core structure is extreme repetition. I record the entire process in which “I love you” appears on the palm and eventually disappears, drifting between intimacy, exhaustion, willpower, and numbness. The palm, a site that is at once private and fragile, yet elastic and charged with tension, 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 into 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 final moment of the day, I still choose to try to preserve a certain courage to love — including the courage to love, and the courage to be loved.
I will love you for 840 times. I will love for 840 times.
我用母语，在手心反复书写“我爱你” 840 遍。这个数字取自 Erik Satie 的作品《Vexations》——一首关于爱恋、执念的乐曲，以极端的重复作为其核心结构。我记录下“我爱你”在掌心显现并最终消失的全过程, 游移于亲密、疲惫、意志与麻木之间。手心这一既私密，脆弱同时又富有弹性和张力的部位，成为情感被书写、显影、又被抹除的场所。
这件作品同时根植于我的个人经验。我有意无意地不断进入异地与异国恋之中，仿佛实践着某种游牧的爱。在爱发生时，我选择尽力而为；而在真正放下之后，我又常常惊讶于自己的无情。但在一天的最后时刻，我仍选择尝试保留一种爱的勇气——包括去爱的勇气，以及被爱的勇气。
我想我会爱你840遍，我想我会爱840遍。
This work is also rooted in my personal experience. Consciously or unconsciously, I repeatedly enter into 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 final moment of the day, I still choose to try to preserve a certain courage to love — including the courage to love, and the courage to be loved.
I will love you for 840 times. I will love for 840 times.
我用母语，在手心反复书写“我爱你” 840 遍。这个数字取自 Erik Satie 的作品《Vexations》——一首关于爱恋、执念的乐曲，以极端的重复作为其核心结构。我记录下“我爱你”在掌心显现并最终消失的全过程, 游移于亲密、疲惫、意志与麻木之间。手心这一既私密，脆弱同时又富有弹性和张力的部位，成为情感被书写、显影、又被抹除的场所。
这件作品同时根植于我的个人经验。我有意无意地不断进入异地与异国恋之中，仿佛实践着某种游牧的爱。在爱发生时，我选择尽力而为；而在真正放下之后，我又常常惊讶于自己的无情。但在一天的最后时刻，我仍选择尝试保留一种爱的勇气——包括去爱的勇气，以及被爱的勇气。
我想我会爱你840遍，我想我会爱840遍。
1. I Love You When I Wake Up on Thursday Mornings
2025.11.27
About 7:10 a.m.
3 videos(digitalized), color, sound
我爱你
사랑해요
あいしてる
1. Love Language
It was a project I had wanted to do for a long time, but one winter morning I opened my eyes, looked at the curtains, and suddenly thought, “Today is the day.” So I began and finished it.
In fact, I recorded (filmed) it three times, and in the end I chose the first test video. Perhaps that unprepared, unpracticed, hazy and awkward state is the most embarrassing to show—and therefore the one that must be shown.
When I filmed the video, I too began speaking first in my mother tongue (Chinese). But after reviewing it, I realized that the video in my mother tongue was the longest (9s). I waited a long time before opening my mouth.Korean was the second longest. After about ten years of learning it, the language has become much more familiar to me.Yet still, it felt less familiar than my mother tongue, and at the same time somehow less shameful. In contrast, the video in Japanese—my least familiar language—was the shortest and ended the most decisively, and when I said “I love you” in Japanese, it somehow sounded the most confident.
Perhaps when I filmed in Japanese, I was thinking less about love itself and more about trying to pronounce something so unfamiliar correctly.
In foreign languages, I feel like I can say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I dislike you” more easily.
But the more familiar a language becomes, the closer the distance between my emotions and the words—
and everything becomes more embarrassing.
2. Love Language
Regardless of mother tongue or foreign language, locals or foreigners,
each person has their own love language.
And the phrase “I love you” will inevitably feel different to every person—
because each of us grew up in different families and experienced different forms of love.
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, can I give to others?
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, do I wish to receive?
At the very least, I do not want to endlessly prove myself,
nor do I want to pretend not to love.
I imagine a love that maintains some kind of dynamic equality.
Can I understand and embrace the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind someone else’s love language?
Can I refrain from blaming myself for their anxiety, wounds, and anger?
And can I set down my past anxieties, doubts, and anger,
be patient, and learn—and listen to—another person’s love language?
(If love is said to be long-suffering and gentle.)
It was a project I had wanted to do for a long time, but one winter morning I opened my eyes, looked at the curtains, and suddenly thought, “Today is the day.” So I began and finished it.
In fact, I recorded (filmed) it three times, and in the end I chose the first test video. Perhaps that unprepared, unpracticed, hazy and awkward state is the most embarrassing to show—and therefore the one that must be shown.
When I filmed the video, I too began speaking first in my mother tongue (Chinese). But after reviewing it, I realized that the video in my mother tongue was the longest (9s). I waited a long time before opening my mouth.Korean was the second longest. After about ten years of learning it, the language has become much more familiar to me.Yet still, it felt less familiar than my mother tongue, and at the same time somehow less shameful. In contrast, the video in Japanese—my least familiar language—was the shortest and ended the most decisively, and when I said “I love you” in Japanese, it somehow sounded the most confident.
Perhaps when I filmed in Japanese, I was thinking less about love itself and more about trying to pronounce something so unfamiliar correctly.
In foreign languages, I feel like I can say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I dislike you” more easily.
But the more familiar a language becomes, the closer the distance between my emotions and the words—
and everything becomes more embarrassing.
2. Love Language
Regardless of mother tongue or foreign language, locals or foreigners,
each person has their own love language.
And the phrase “I love you” will inevitably feel different to every person—
because each of us grew up in different families and experienced different forms of love.
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, can I give to others?
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, do I wish to receive?
At the very least, I do not want to endlessly prove myself,
nor do I want to pretend not to love.
I imagine a love that maintains some kind of dynamic equality.
Can I understand and embrace the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind someone else’s love language?
Can I refrain from blaming myself for their anxiety, wounds, and anger?
And can I set down my past anxieties, doubts, and anger,
be patient, and learn—and listen to—another person’s love language?
(If love is said to be long-suffering and gentle.)