Beijing Project n.29 Yu Bogong 于伯公

From the artist’s original plan: “Being alone means stepping away for a moment from society into a space and time that are yours alone. Everyone has moments of introspection, and that tranquillity helps you recognise your problems and bring to the surface things that tend to be ignored. Try talking to yourself to return to your own peaceful world, where only your emotions and perceptions live. The sandbox is perhaps the very beginning of our knowledge of the world – and a harbour for the soul.”

The installation draws on sandplay therapy, developed by the Jungian analyst Dora Kalff (1904–1990), who founded the International Society for Sandplay Therapy in 1985. By shaping the sand and arranging small objects, participants create something close to their own inner world: the free, creative game turns the unconscious into a three-dimensional image, as in a dream, and can open the process Jung called individuation – a person’s gradual awareness of his or her wholeness as a human being.

In the factory, a wooden sandbox – its bottom and sides painted blue, so that digging feels like finding water and the edges recall the sky – stood beside shelves of everyday objects and toys: cups, shells, a teapot, a toy elephant, a Buddha figure, a house, walnuts, eggs, a Kongming lock, candles, chopsticks, a screwdriver, keys, a compass, paper boats and much more. The invitation was simple: “Use the toys on the shelves to make something in the sandbox – anything you like. There is no time limit.”

Participants were encouraged to walk around their sand world and look at it from different angles, to change it if they wished, and to have it photographed; the arrangement could then be sent to the artist for an analysis of its integration, richness, dynamism and flow.