Sizhu Li: Moonment: Finding A Way

Sizhu Li: Moonment: Finding A Way

Through Sunday, May 4, 2025

Moonment: Finding A Way features new site-specific, kinetic installations by Sizhu Li and continues her exploration of aluminum as a sculptural and poetic form. The namesake installation Moonment consisting of three-waves and a metaphorical heart was first developed by the artist in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time Sizhu reflected upon the poem Gazing at the Moon, Longing from Afar by Tang Dynasty poet and politician Zhang Jiuling:

The sea

gives birth to a shining moon

As the other end of the world

shares this moment.

This sentimental man

resents a distant night

And the whole evening

gives rise to longing.

Extinguishing a candle,

feeling the fullness of moonlight

Putting on clothes

as I wake in heavy dew.

Unable

to fill my hands with this gift

I return to bed

and dream a lovely tryst.

Having immigrated to the US eight years ago from China, experiences of distance and longing are familiar to Sizhu but were intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moonment is built on the idea that as we gaze towards the moon, we can connect to those we love across space and time. It invites participants to consider a cosmic and metaphysical experience of time.

Sizhu’s interventions in the Contemporary’s Main Gallery consist of three core installations, the aforementioned Moonment, Finding A Way, and Dividing Lines. Her kinetic installation Finding A Way responds cleverly to the innerworkings of the building. The existing pipes that travel through the building converge with a sculptural network of pipes, moving the eye around the gallery and supporting the kinetic waves, that drift from wall to wall.

In the work Dividing Lines, one of Sizhu’s waves is impeded by a black, metal fence. This dividing structure, it’s rigid and dark form, feels in conflict with the wave. Dividing Lines is the artists response to making work in South Texas and the narratives that dominate public understanding of Texas as well as issues effecting families and communities and of the region. The themes of distance, longing, love, and separation present in the entire Moonment series are acutely felt through the symbol of the fence.

The walls throughout the gallery act as a small labyrinth being utilized as barriers, to direct movement around the space and obstruct views of the work, requiring one to more around, following pipes, aluminum, and sound to complete the works. Around the perimeter of the gallery are smaller scale sculptures made within the artists lexicon of symbolic forms and characters. Together all these elements create a small survey of Sizhu’s materials and methodologies explore in her practice thus far.

Although containing mechanized and industrial materials with futurist sensibilities, the installation’s references to the organic foreground the experience of the work. The sound and motion of the waves; gusts of air pushing the aluminum; rhythmic beating of the ‘heart”; light bouncing and reflecting off the shiny aluminum like the surface of water, all work together to form a meditative, reflective environment, akin to watching wave roll in on oceans shores. Moonment: Finding A Way is an invitation to be present and find respite within the exhibition and as you leave, when you reengage the world around you.

-Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray

Curator and Exhibitions Director