Michelle Jiaxin Huang

01  Index
02 Eternal  recurrence    
03 A scene of spiritual consumption
04 Telegraph
 


About
CV
Email
Instagram 

Index
2024|The Steel Yard Residency Installation

Drawing on Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of progress in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Index examines how the privileging of post-Enlightenment rationality has shaped a reductive, standardized human experience in the modern world. Comprising Map I & II, Kiosk, a set of chairs, and an amorphic table, the installation presents a curated manuscript of fragmented instructions and scattered visual cues. By reintegrating myth and speculation into its duplicitous systematic assemblage, Index cultivates a subtle dialogue of semiotic relay, questioning instinctive associations with symbols, metaphors, and authoritative language.

Index challenges the standardized notion of empirical dominance, and aims at constructing a subversive language capable of destabilizing, and reinterpreting the systems of power upheld by contemporary progress



Installation shot
mild steel, copper, slag, walnut, graphite on paper





Experimental Image

The act of deconstruction begins with a reinterpretation of empirical representation, considering how scientific symbols, shrouded in an aura of neutrality and precision, foster an inherent trust in the systems they represent. By simulating the formal lexicon of schematic diagrams, initial drawings explore how an alternative use of this visual language can imbue representations of non-truth with a sense of credibility.

                                                    Schematic I    
18” x 24”, graphite on paper 

Schematic II
18” x 24”, graphite on paper




What followed was the emergence of a hybridized aesthetic—one that synthesized the visual language of functionality, efficiency, and precision with elements of mythical worldbuilding. This dialectical interplay recalls Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique, wherein the drive toward demystification paradoxically reinstates the very mythic structures it seeks to overcome. 

The subsequent works—including Maps 1 & 2, Kiosk, the chairs, and the stretcher— follow this process of deconstruction and rebuilding. The dispersed presence of slag serves to link the discrete objects through a state of tension, loosely echoing the spatial configurations suggested in Map 1. This constellation of elements enacts a kind of semiotic exchange, wherein the viewer is invited to engage in a speculative act of indexing as the installation’s fabulated logic is decoded.



Installation Shot,
copper, mild steel, slag, graphite on paper


Map I
18” x 24”, graphite on paper

Map II
18” x 24”, graphite on paper



Chair detail
copper, mild steel, slag

Kiosk detail
mild steel, copper, walnut    




Installation shot