“I wanted to focus on the emotive quality of the space,” explains Duyi Han of the apartment he has recently transformed just outside Shanghai. The surrealistic installation (conceived as a high-concept Airbnb rental before pandemic lockdowns intervened) marks a Gesamtkunstwerk for the artist and designer, who studied architecture at Cornell University and cut his teeth at Herzog & de Meuron. For this immersive residential project, titled Ordinance of the Subconscious Treatment, Han has created rooms and furnishings that speak to both Chinese culture and concepts of mental health.
Throughout the unit, sliding curtains, LED lights, and a maze of interstitial spaces suggest an eerie, somewhat clinical air. Several rooms are painted a shade of mint green that evokes hospital settings as well as interiors from Han’s childhood. “It’s about creating a visual experience,” he reflects on the project, which spans both physical and photographic forms. As with his other interior work, Han has documented the rooms in a fine-art series of digitally manipulated images.
The furniture, which debuted at the Alcova exhibition during this year’s Salone del Mobile fair, is packed with semiotic meaning. A cabinet’s bulbous shape nods to Chinese incense burners, and a floor lamp’s ribbon-like shade to Buddhist banners. Recurring magenta embroidery on yellow silk, meanwhile, calls to mind Taoist talismans, only instead of bearing religious inscriptions, Han’s pieces are adorned with the molecular structures of substances such as vitamin B12, the neurotransmitter serotonin, and the antidepressant sertraline. Those abstract motifs mix with phrases that have tugged on his heartstrings, among them the Billie Eilish lyric “My doctors can’t explain my symptoms or my pain,” which wraps the octagonal face of his Dopamine floor lamp. Emblazoned on the side of his Oxytocin cabinet are the words “Being aloof is a preference.” For Han, these wide-ranging sentiments and cultural references are all connected: “I’m reflecting on the belief systems people have today and the sense of what brings happiness.” duyihan.com