Edward Pien's Deep Waters at Centre culturel canadien, Paris

Edward Pien's installation Deep Waters at the Centre culturel canadien in Paris (December 1, 2019 – February 23, 2020) immerses visitors in a labyrinth of paper walls, drawings, and video. The space features suspended silk paper walls forming circular chambers, bathed in blue light, covered with fantastical hybrid creatures combining marine animals and human bodies. These drawings, executed in black and azure inks, evoke both threat and attraction. The installation leads to a secret room with a crumpled paper cylinder pierced with holes; peering inside reveals pink tunnels creating an illusion of infinite depth, while blowing on micro-images reveals sexually ambiguous mutant figures. This voyeuristic experience references Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés, but replaces Duchamp's desexualized, mortuary female body with Pien's vibrant, ever-renewing eroticism. A video projection shows a headless man struggling to stay afloat in water, surrounded by drawings of long-haired female heads. Pien explains that in Chinese mythology, ghosts trapped beneath the water's surface prey on humans, drowning them to steal their souls and gain freedom. Deep Waters is a new creation, but since the 1990s Pien has worked with large-scale drawing integrated into labyrinthine structures, developing a personal metaphorical iconography. The installation evokes a dive into human emotions: desire, anxiety, vulnerability.