Notes on Etching

Etching is when you place two sheets of metal in an acid bath; Through an electrical current, material from one plate is eaten away and transferred onto the other. Areas of the “donor” plate can be covered to prevent the etching process, allowing different patterns or images to form.

This process fascinates me on so many levels. I was in the chemistry room, with my gas mask on, looking into the plastic cabinet as if watching an exhibition, a migration. All those small particles travelling in the fluid, although not clear to the naked eyes, I can imagine their movements, as individuals leaving their home, to a new place and never coming back.

The process takes some time. I examine the progress every 20 mins. Materials are separated from its original plate, leaving a surface behind of what is no longer there. The marks of their absence is much more obvious, compared to the receiving plate where they just merge into unrecognizable giant. Are they happy with where they are now? Are they painful?

Some may say the etching process reveals the layer underneath, I see this process as lost. I later on switch the two plates so the role of receiver and giver changes; taking off sections of covered layer and put the plate back to the bath. Deconstruct and reconstruct endlessly, yet the surface is never the same as how it started. Imagine the same process happening to a city, of its ever-changing landscape. I wonder if there is memory of those that disappeared. When we look at a house, details of walls, roads, doors, windows; their broken façade, leaky pipes, faded paint, cracked surfaces… surely we are not looking at a moment alone. All the history and memory of a place that’s forever changing, overlaps and collapses into one flat imagery that is perhaps difficult to comprehend.

The result of the test pieces remanences of an archaeological carved stone. How ironic that my attempt of making fragile things, in the verge of disappearing, could be visually this timeless.