Ruohan Zhao

With her work Ruohan Zhao hopes to create a bedtime story to guide the audience toward nihilism. She states that children are the masters of nihilism because they do not have a subjective conception, therefore no insomnia. So let’s all sleep together. 

The work is divided into reality, translated into a marketplace where she sells second-hand objects, and the so-called “dreamland”. Besides that, Ruohan created a performance where she functions as a bridge between reality and dreamland. 

The work arose from her personal anxiety towards nihilism as well as a personal longing to prove her own being and decrease her loneliness with objects. She tried to find answers to soothe her anxiety, which, in the end, she found; Ruohan realises she is nothingness after all. Everything is nothingness, and that is, according to Ruohan, the cycle of the universe.

She is reflecting on Western philosophers, with a focus on Heidegger, through the ancient Chinese philosophy of Zhuangzi, which explains that all human beings, death and anything else are all part of the cycle of the universe. There is no reason to define anything by the subjective view of a human. 

So let’s all sleep together

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