I continuously build and deconstruct my living systems to navigate shifting cultural and social structures—a strategic approach shaped by my life across China, Canada, and the U.S. I work within the friction between design and art, focusing on unspeakable experiences often overlooked in marginal environments. Drawing from daily life, I stage temporary interventions that unfold through bookmaking, woodworking, sound, and food, evoking a sense of safety and inviting others into a shared space of care.
My practice often begins with small disruptions to everyday routines, sometimes as deliberately designed detours from the original path. I also engage in repetitive bodily acts—drawing, walking, tracing, cleaning—not for the gestures alone but for the traces they leave in memory, beyond language and the literal. In these in-between spaces, I find rhythm. Repetition becomes a spatial memory. Destruction becomes an instrument of healing.

Paste into Google Translate to read — like I always do.

Hanshu Ma