Tao Hui Money Grab Hand, 2024
Strings of chicken feet—lifelike, cast in colored glass—create an eerie but also oddly beautiful threshold.
In many parts of China, chicken feet symbolize good luck; as talismans, they evoke the "money-grabbing" gesture for fortune. In other regions, chicken feet were also used for divination: severed from live chickens, the lines on the feet examined to predict the fortunes of the coming year.
Here, ordinary objects are transformed by the artist, inviting us to deconstruct and reflect on the anomalies within objects and experiences we take for granted.
The work also connects to the artist's new film, Chilling Terror Sweeps the North: here the two protagonists discuss chicken feet, both in the context of divination and regional ways of preparation.
