By Kanthy Peng
Kanthy Peng’s debut artist book, Ground Sea, weaves a visual narrative exploring depression, memory, and loss through 73 photographs.
In Ground Sea, Peng re-orchestrates photographs spanning over a decade and multiple projects into a new diptych-structured work. The first part, Sunset Watchers, unfolds through black-and-white portraits of three women reenacting a phantom folktale following the 1896 tsunami in Japan—images that also allude to the anxious premonition of those living with depression. Interspersed colored photographs recall Peng’s bodily memory of being bedridden due to illness. The second part, Kuāfù Chases The Sun, carries stills from two video works about Peng’s father, who retired from the People’s Liberation Army ten years after his daughter left home. In these images, his body is constantly propelled forward by the cogs of a system, breaking the stagnation of the first part, only to fall into nothingness ultimately.
Author: Kanthy Peng
Poet: Geng Yao
Designer: Muxi Gao, Company Per Form
Publisher: te editions
Year: 2025
Pages: 176
Dimensions: 8” x 10.62”
Cover: Paperback
ISB-13: ISBN 979-8-9890170-4-1
Language: Chinese, English
By Kanthy Peng
Kanthy Peng’s debut artist book, Ground Sea, weaves a visual narrative exploring depression, memory, and loss through 73 photographs.
In Ground Sea, Peng re-orchestrates photographs spanning over a decade and multiple projects into a new diptych-structured work. The first part, Sunset Watchers, unfolds through black-and-white portraits of three women reenacting a phantom folktale following the 1896 tsunami in Japan—images that also allude to the anxious premonition of those living with depression. Interspersed colored photographs recall Peng’s bodily memory of being bedridden due to illness. The second part, Kuāfù Chases The Sun, carries stills from two video works about Peng’s father, who retired from the People’s Liberation Army ten years after his daughter left home. In these images, his body is constantly propelled forward by the cogs of a system, breaking the stagnation of the first part, only to fall into nothingness ultimately.
Author: Kanthy Peng
Poet: Geng Yao
Designer: Muxi Gao, Company Per Form
Publisher: te editions
Year: 2025
Pages: 176
Dimensions: 8” x 10.62”
Cover: Paperback
ISB-13: ISBN 979-8-9890170-4-1
Language: Chinese, English
Image 1 of 1