SF Ho
弗 Money Mirror, plant-dyed cotton with silk screen and stencil, 2022
SF Ho, 弗 Money Mirror, plant-dyed cotton with silk screen and stencil, 2022
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弗
We are curious about emptiness and its reflections. A golden coin is held in front of a mirror. The opposite of a mirror image ought to be the thing itself. We don’t know how we got here, inside a room that smells of burning dead leaves. Capital is a form of dark magic. We squint downward into our fleshy hands. You whittle away at a wandering line so that only its core remains. The squiggle is stabbed through with vertical strokes, as if held fast by a pair of bolts. Standing in a smoke-filled room, someone mentions that actually, it’s the line that binds the bolts in place. This haptic gesture is symbolized by a look of infinite calm and transmitted through repetitive forms such as ritual, text, and blood. Liver spots and syllabics form constellations that point to your father’s long ears, your grandmother’s hands. They wrap around the chest and throat, then travel down each spindly limb. You feel your pulse thrum against the tightening cord, swelling at the ends of your fingertips. This cord is a whip. Gold dissolves into an ever-expanding network of impossible relations. You call me out of habit, our conversations have become transactional. I congratulate you on buying a new car and console you over the death of your cat. This lump of flesh and dirt can dance. You can trade it in for some other, more novel invention. Find out what else it can do for you. Movement is impossible. One can only hold still, standing very straight, with the asceticism of a soldier or a saint. A thin branch will not warp if it is tied very tight. Setting aside food, pleasure, and sleep, you become a weapon. Clarity rises through the texture of a cloud, ascends ever further onto an esoteric plain. In the quiet absence that remains, a face. |
Money Mirror, 2020
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Money Mirror, 2020
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SF Ho is an artist, writer, and organizer. They have been living as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaɬ peoples for over fourteen years. Operating somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be, their work is informed by feminist methodologies, land-based practices, and grassroots community networks. Ho has presented their artwork and writing both regionally and internationally. They published a book about love and aliens called George, the Parasite.
