<Out of sight, Out of mind> (2026)
is mixed-media installation
featuring a video essay, live performance,
a fake pet box shipped through the postal system in China,
and surveillance footage documenting its journey.
Under China’s hyper-B2C e-commerce landscape,
animal commodification reached another level:
live pets can be shoped online,
shipped and refunded as standard parcels,
even Under “7-day death compensation” policies.
A short presentation video is available here.
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The Video Essay
<Out of sight, Out of mind | 眼不见心为净> 8’30’’
This project began as a personal research.
I wanted to understand something I couldn't let go of:
“If those who buy animals are supposed to love them, why do they allow them to suffer in transit alongside tons of parcels?”
I attempt to unpack what is hidden beneath this selective blindness,
to drag into view the disturbing parts -
the suffering of those pets during the transit process, where the system is built to hide.
To go further,
I built a fake pet-shipping package,
placed a surveillance camera inside, and mailed it for real.
(It may not have been entirely legal — but neither is shipping live animals as parcels.)
I wanted to see what the animals see: the darkness, the vibration,
the moment of being thrown onto a pile of boxes.
If the system is designed to keep me from looking,
then looking — deliberately, from the inside — becomes the work itself.
It went 1,373 kilometers.
Four days. Fifty hours of footage — projected on the crate, uncut
The Installation
This project looks, through video essay, at an extreme case of animal commodification.
But what I wanted to explore more was this:
how to make participants become the argument itself, without knowing it.
The entire installation runs under a fake logistics company
— HLYC. Here Lies Your Choice.
What you buy is a choice, sitting here is also a choice.
Visitors chose to sit on top while I am lying inside.
On the monitor next to the footage runs a live feed
— me, in real time, in the box beneath them, as the clue to find what is really inside the box.
In the end, I am not pointing to one country that treats animals badly.
China enlarges what already exists everywhere else,
placing the uncomfortable parts in front of you — raw and unfiltered.
Tony wants cheaper pets. Taylor wants more clothes.
Kitty wants fresher fish. Wang Wang wants it all
It's not just pet shipping. Behind every choice,
there's probably a brutal truth.
"Out of sight, out of mind" is not just a personal laziness,
it is a carefully maintained structural condition.
Breaking through it requires an active movement
in the opposite direction:
to see the parts the system has folded away,
and to restore what is hidden inside the box to its real weight.
Materials
Wood, cardboard, and packaging salvaged from real deliveries. Two crates repurposed as screens for looping transit footage. An iPad as live monitor. Product images sourced from Chinese e-commerce platforms, shown with their translations, printed on polyester paper.
A custom-built crate bench conceals a compartment where the artist lies during the performance, breathing through a small hole that also lets in the smell of grass. A surveillance camera inside streams to a monitor beside the transit footage.
Size
Box Tower: 3 m (h) × 0.9 m (w) × 0.7 m (d)
Living Bench: 1.6 m (l) × 0.7 m (w) × 0.6 m (h)
Crate Screen: 2.8 m (w) × 1.6 m (h) × 0.3 m (d)
Overall installation dimensions are extendable, depending on the exhibition space.