PARADOX & AFTER THE FACT WRITTEN BY NINA HUAN

after the fact

witness again
at
the outer limits [

] to transcribe
] to reformulate
to be [

]

] a tactile afterimage

]
]

skein of [ ]
[
]

chiasmic [
]
fidelity [

Paradox
Between particulate matter
and hardened comprehension,
desire resides in the air. Between
the distance from there to here.

If seeing constitutes proof, is language
an empirical embodiment? Loose letters
subdue vision under a veritable grasp. Fixed
system of containment. The rules of mutability
have become discernible.

To gaze at sweetness as it bends
light, focusing into a sharp image.
To graze its glimmer and taste the ridges,
which melt again on the tongue
curling with warmth. How a crushable thing is
simultaneously something refinable—
from the air’s vantage point,
it is a question of semantics.

Writer’s Bio:

Nina Huang is a writer and historian of contemporary art, materiality, embodiment, and memory. Her research analyzes mediated indexicality and tropes of representation to complicate canonical interpretations and understand artistic practices across temporal, geographical, and medium-specific designations.

Nina holds an MA in History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BFA in Studio Art (Printmaking Concentration) and Art History and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis.