Kehan Lai 赖可涵

"The project stems from my interest in envisioning what the astral world looks like. The astral world, or astral realm, is said to be a plane of existence assumed by esoteric philosophies and mystery religions. It's a world different from the physical world and could be accessed by astral projection. I'm interested in using photographs taken in the physical world to construct scenes representing the astral world. I also explore how the physical world and the imaginary one can intertwine in such ways.

First, I used an iPhone camera with inverted color settings and the live mode as a way to turn the physical world into lyrical abstractions. Through this process, I gathered an archive of abstract images and used them as raw materials to construct the scenes. The images were printed and stuck to the surface of wooden panels and laser-cut wooden shapes. The panels form spaces and the shapes form entities representing the "spirit" said to flow around in the astral world.

The resulting photographs become a series of constructed scenes depicting different areas in the astral world. My donation to Peace Hotel is one of the photographs in this project and the Trace is one of the wooden panels used to construct the scene depicted." (Kehan Lai, 2022)