I Swallowed a Metal Moon
“I swallowed a metal moon—they called it a screw.”
This work is a response to that line—a line written by contemporary Chinese poet and assembly-line worker 许立志 Lizhi Xu. The harsh life didn’t deplete his energy, which he poured into poetry, trying to pursue the moon. While the agony was too bitter for him to swallow, he ended his own life in 2014, but his words remain.
The necklet takes the form of a cut-away moon: its front embedded with screws and a gear that turns in circles. Lizhi was the “fuel” of the industrial age—a stand-in for countless lives reduced to function, brilliance lost to exhaustion.
This piece poses a question: When a person carries the soul of a poet but is used only as a screw— how much space for being human is left?
I Swallowed a Metal Moon
2023
Necklet
177mm x 154mm x 27mm
Pewter
Photography: KaviengCheng
Model: Claudio Grill