“We bandage when we get hurt. Sometimes it seems if we avoid looking at the wound, everything looks alright.”

“Woundscape” showcases a series of imaginative scenes of wounds and healing. Combining personal trauma with botanic imagination, Chan investigates the idea of encapsulation and isolation in the immune system by constructing these wounds paintings.

Isolation is a universal mechanism in the immune system of organisms, such as compartmentalization that takes place in injured trees, where new wood will grow around the wound to seal it from further infection; calcification that happens when a foreign particle enters the oyster shell, in which the oyster secretes layers of minerals to encapsulate it and isolate it from the oyster’s internal organs.

At the psychological level, people tend to isolate themselves from trauma through avoidance, repression, or blurring the memory. They cut themselves out of the picture and stay in quarantine.

However, the tree wound would never heal, the intruder inside the pearl stays, and the forgotten memory creeps in without warning. The host traps in a wounded state and never recovers. A strong sense of loneliness creates from self-isolation.

In this showcase, the imaginative hybrid wounds are created through mixed materials, inviting the public to contact and gaze inside the once-closed wounds, exploring an escape through the open wounds.