Biography
This project is a visual elegy for the digital age, a meditation on how cultural memory persists in a world of physical absence. It does not aim to reconstruct lost objects, but to summon their indelible phantoms and present them as core evidence in an investigation into historical violence.
We focus on the Buddhist sculptures violently removed from Chinese temples and grottoes, now scattered across the globe. The “absence” of these statues is itself a powerful language. Inspired by pioneering investigative practices, we create a new art form where the aesthetic experience itself becomes a mode of analysis and testimony. We have built a unique archive—one composed of light, data, and memory.
Using the latest Gaussian Splatting rendering technology, we transform each lost sculpture into a ghostly cloud of particles, floating within its original, now-empty space. These particles are not random; they are distilled from the fragments of history: a century-old black-and-white photograph , a museum acquisition card, a line of text describing its journey. Each point of light is a fragment of a broken narrative. Together, they not only converge into a paradoxical form that is both present and absent, but also visually trace the violent trajectories of each object's displacement across continents. This visual uncertainty and immateriality serve as a profound metaphor for the fragmentation of identity these treasures have endured, and for the systemic nature of their cultural dispossession.
The audience can navigate an immersive environment, walking among these data-formed “phantoms.” As they draw near, the particles might reconfigure, and archival audio associated with the sculpture might be heard—perhaps the field notes of an archaeologist, or the faint, recalled testimony of a local villager about the theft. It is an experience of direct dialogue with absence. Crucially, the audience can activate the data layer of each phantom, revealing its path through the global art market and exposing the systemic network of individuals, institutions, and geopolitical forces behind each isolated incident of loss.
Spectral Evidence explores a form of “digital-age forensics.” It demonstrates that even when the physical vessel is taken, cultural memory can still be perceived, activated, and reassembled into powerful evidence through new technological mediums. What returns are not cold statues, but warm ghosts laden with trauma and historical trajectories. They haunt the digital space, telling us their systemic stories of home and exile.