Ming Lu - Eternal Vessel

Eternal Vessel is an immersive installation conceived for the interior of a boat. The boat becomes the tomb and final vessel of a fictional contemporary female emperor, carrying her belongings, images and imagined history beyond her lifetime. Entering the space, the viewer enters her burial chamber and the world she has constructed around herself. Large-scale woven tapestries surround the interior, depicting scenes from the emperor’s reign and afterlife. Contemporary figures and everyday life appear alongside imagery drawn from Chinese mythology and visual history. The emperor encounters mythological beings, ancient symbols reappear in contemporary landscapes, and scenes from ordinary life continue even within the imagined world of the dead. Rather than reconstructing a historical past, these images are retold and allowed to live again in another time. Ceramic vessels and sculptural objects are placed throughout the space as the emperor’s imagined belongings and burial objects. Some draw on the forms and functions of ancient ritual vessels, while others introduce fictional creatures and figures into the tomb. Together with the tapestries, they transform the boat into a space suspended between burial chamber, vessel and imagined world. The fictional emperor moves through a world in which power is performed through images, rituals and material objects. Around her, symbols inherited from the past continue to change as they are remembered, repeated and reinvented. Her own image enters this process as well, as she attempts to construct a legacy capable of surviving her death. At the heart of Eternal Vessel is a desire to outlive one’s own lifetime. The exhibition considers what we choose to preserve, how images and narratives continue after the people who created them are gone, and how power attempts to extend itself beyond death. Inside the tomb, however, time does not unfold in a straight line. Mythology, personal memory, historical imagery and contemporary life inhabit the same world, where images from distant pasts encounter newly invented ones. The emperor becomes part of this continuing movement, leaving open what might remain of a person, an image or a story as it travels beyond its own time. www.minglu.art The gallery is located at Motor Ship HEIMATLAND Märkisches Ufer 1z 10 179 Berlin-Mitte +49 1525 7486496 www.hosekcontemporary.com