This project is based on discarded coal stoves collected from rural northern China during the country’s recent “Coal-to-Gas” energy transition. Once essential to domestic life and winter survival, these stoves were dismantled and abandoned as part of a rapid national campaign to reduce coal consumption and air pollution.
Through sculpture and oral history, the work reconsiders these objects as silent remnants of industrial transformation and uneven social change. Rusted surfaces, damaged structures, and emerging plant life reveal fragile tensions between abandonment, survival, and regeneration.
Focusing on overlooked everyday experiences, the installation reflects on how large-scale political and ecological transitions reshape memory, labour, and ordinary life.