Han Mengyun's film installations explore labor, language, and feminine ecologies across borders

Han Mengyun's film installation Suffering Hands, Broken Thread features in the inaugural Bukhara Biennial. The work, titled Dhikr (2025), captures Uzbek women working in a textile factory, their fingers moving with rapid intensity at looms. A soundscape of machinery, fans, traffic, and a baby's cry creates a quiet polyphony. Han's approach emphasizes rhythmic patterns of labor, learning, and making as central grammar. Her artistic practice involves deep study of languages including Chinese, English, and Sanskrit, alongside crafts like woodblock printing and textile weaving. Another work, Gift (2025), was filmed during her AlUla Visual Art Residency in Saudi Arabia's palm groves. This piece proposes a feminine ecology where verse, plant life, and nurture cycles intertwine as forms of speech. Han's research-driven projects function as ethical translations, prioritizing deep listening and careful suturing of knowledge systems. She avoids hierarchical representation while connecting gesture and thought across bodies and borders.