Little Things Mean A Lot: Sirui Ma
Little things do mean a lot, and Sirui Ma’s series of photographs recently on show at Hackney Gallery is a testament to the importance of community and connectedness in a world that feels increasingly hostile. Sirui is a Worm because her literary influences are vast and wide-ranging. She is someone that brings literature and fine art together, and this show is the perfect example of how this symbiosis or cross-pollination is such an effective partnership in creative expression. There are four books in particular that Sirui has drawn from for this show: The Mushroom at the End of the World, Wild Swans, Braiding Sweetgrass and The Book of Delights.
Sirui describes the series as ‘a self portrait through the women around her’ and in the various portraits within the series, the subjects’ gentle gaze offer a certain state of introspection to their viewer. Portraits of women on park benches, holding mushrooms to their noses or simply standing in the street are exhibited alongside softly composed fruits, twigs, grasses and mushrooms, expressing an unspoken hint of interconnectedness, of ecological harmony. Sirui tells me that The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing, and that the delicate and unusual commodity chain of the mushroom is something that she has been exploring with her photographic work. The way that the Matsutake mushroom is only grown in forests in the US that are disturbed by humans, foraged by immigrant Asian communities, and then shipped to Japan where it is a delicacy, is a demonstration of how interconnected and interdependent the planet is, and how we as humans are an integral part of that. Despite its precarity, a whole nation relies on the Matsutake supply chain in order to fulfil one of it’s most famous delicacies. The natural world meets the industrial, and it’s clear by looking at Sirui’s tender and gentle photographs that her environment and the things and people she surround herself with hold high importance and meaning. She explores the theme of foraging in her work, and The Mushroom at the End of the World has brought her to a place of admiring it as a pre-industrial livelihood, one that is world-making.
This theme of interconnectedness can be followed through to Sirui’s reference to Wild Swans: The Daughters of China by Jung Chang, a book that documents the recent history of China told through three generations of women and their lived experiences. Sirui’s practice explores the unspoken solidarity among women of Asian descent, and in Little Things Mean a Lot, she photographs her friends, muses and people that she has formed a relationship with through her work, drawing on the experience of women with Asian heritage living in London. Wild Swans offered Sirui a look at how the tumultuous shifts in socio-political tides through feudalism, imperialism and communism manifested in the lives of a family’s lineage of women, and helped her to understand her own family history a bit more. The photographs in this show give the sense that Sirui has created these kinds of familial relationships and bonds with those that she is photographing; their vulnerability, gentleness and comfort seen in each work.
In a similar vein, Sirui also turns to the natural world for commune and healing. Drawing on Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, she references the quote “To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.” This shows in her work with it’s attention to detail, a perfectly placed lizard on a face, tiny mushrooms growing from a branch, a mossy stick or the smooth elaborate curvature of a mushroom. She captures these quiet moments of nature’s peacefulness, and offers her viewer a sense of calm in the gallery space. She credits Kimmerer for her description of encountering a strawberry from an early age, saying how the fruit that nature bears belong to no one, and we must all learn to better steward the Earth as she looks after us.
Her final literary reference also pays attention to these details, and re-enforces Sirui’s recognition of the gifts of the Earth. The Book of Delights by Ross Gay has taught the artist how to take stock of the beauty that we encounter in the quotidian, “there is at least one delight we have per day, and ain’t that something” she tells me. She learnt about the constant caretaking that we partake in our every day lives from this book. Even down to the layout of the show, the way each image is placed to create a presence of nature next to the human, shows the deep care that Sirui has embodied from these readings. Little Things Mean a Lot exudes this kind of care.
See more of Sirui’s work here.
