#13 Mitochronia : Participants : Huan Wang
Untitled, 2026. Mix media. Melidoni Cave, Crete

Untitled, 2026 is about eyes, oranges, and Sariki. They all take the shape of a teardrop, telling stories that are not forgotten. I made a zine for the exhibition. It is a teardrop, and also a segment of an orange. Please feel free to pick it up and read.

Sariki is a traditional textile from Crete. In the past, it was a shawl, originally called Pesta, meaning skin. At the beginning, fabric was understood as a second layer of skin that wraps the body. Since the late 15th century, during Ottoman rule, it has been called Sariki. The black Sariki symbolizes resistance and mourning, and also the sorrow that cannot be avoided in life.

In Anogia, I saw a pair of eyes. I looked into them and stayed there, feeling something familiar in his gaze. Then tears began to roll down my face. Some eyes are carved by history and suffering. I recognized him, but following his gaze, I did not know whether I was looking toward the past or the future.

They seemed to scatter across the mountains, staining the oxalis with black. There are oranges everywhere on Crete, yet they hold no juice. The olive trees resemble the tears formed by the island itself. The black olives taste bitter and sour, resting on the grey mountains, soft like moss. Although the climate is warm and humid, the landscape, when seen from a distance, feels dry, as if it lacks moisture. The acidity of the land carries memory, remembering every trace of our touch.

About Mitochondria and the Cave

I did not know what my work would be when I first learned about the exhibition Mitochronia. I initially learned about mitochondria from my conversations with the curator Paul, about its structure, red light therapy, and the relationship between energy exchange and mitochondria. But it was limited, and stayed as my impressions. (continued across)

Huan Wang (b. 1994) is a textile artist working between China and the UK. Her practice engages with site-responsive installations and material processes, tracing the relationship between body, landscape, and transient forms of life. Drawing from lived experience and the environments she inhabits, her work traces cavities of memory and material, where flow, breath, and organic matter are held, transformed, and eventually lost. ‘We’ are but fragile and transient materials.

(continued from across) About Mitochondria and the Cave

Until I arrived at Melidoni Cave.

At the entrance of the cave, I smelled the air. It was warm and humid. I was familiar with the moisture and the smell of soil, but the warmth wrapped around me in a way that felt unexpected. The cave felt alive, breathing still. And seeing the traces of black flowing inside the cave, I felt as if I was returning to her body, to the womb, but at the same time, I was approaching death.

It is not an empty space, but an interior that folds and grows over time. It leaves a cavity for our movements, allowing breathing to become possible, and allowing life to temporarily remain within it. But this space has also become the end of life. At certain moments, it no longer holds flow, but becomes a closed interior. Air stops circulating, breath disappears, and life ends within it. (in 1824, during the Greek War of Independence, hundreds of people died in the cave from suffocation)

I feel both the continuity of life, and an unceasing sorrow for the lives that have passed. This sorrow is quietly persistent, flowing, drop by drop, forming the shell of tears. We are temporary lives within the landscape, like mitochondria, an organic battery.

Website: https://www.wanghuan.art/