Reflection

Beneath the city's forest of buildings, a bird builds a nest on a water pipe outside the wall. Perhaps it mistook the bifurcated pipe for a tree branch, and in its eyes, the cold metal was a big tree to lean on. This scene did not appear in any news report, but happened daily under my house. I recorded this moment with mixed feelings, and became more aware of the fact that natural habitats are being silently eaten away by the city. Through this work, I hope to celebrate the beauty of ecology, and at the same time, call out for the possibility of symbiosis. In the human value system, diamonds are regarded as precious and indispensable symbols because of their rarity and brilliance. However, in this work, the diamond embedded in the trunk of the tree is not used for decoration, it is a silent but vital symbol of a place to live - a bird's nest, a shelter in nature, a stopping point for life. In the picture, city buildings are interspersed with branches and leaves, forming a silent tension between nature and man-made. The diamond is like a neglected ‘invisible heart’, which maintains the pulse of the ecology and lurks in the foundation of the city's continuity. I try to use this work to reconstruct the definition of ‘preciousness’: while human beings continue to occupy space in the expansion of cities, natural habitats are becoming more and more scarce and fragile. If we can treat them as precious as diamonds, we may be able to move towards a future of urban-natural symbiosis.