Every Day a Poem Disappears Into the Universe

In 2018, Every Day a Poem Disappears Into the Universe, activated at TheCube Project Space in Taipei, was inspired by a ritual observed in the city’s streets, where shopkeepers burn imitation banknotes as offerings in front of their stores. The artist asked the gallery managers to burn a poem exhibited during the day each evening in front of the gallery. In exploring poetry writing and thresholds of language in fleeting, temporal form in solo and group exhibitions, the artist developed a series of actions that use writing as a daily link to the indoor or outdoor space where they are performed. The length of each poem is defined by the length of the exhibition: the text, equal in lines to the number of days, is disclosed in fragments. The action is repeated each day but is never the same; it becomes a ritual and invites new ways of celebrating the quotidian. This simple gesture, which materializes differently in each setting, is a measure of the passing of time that reveals, through the appearance and disappearance of words, a sense of poetic rebellion against the instability of the present.