Body, Nature, Fate


Kexin Wei
Artist book/Capstone project

Close-up Photography, Rubbings, Thread


spring 2026
Performance Studies
volume I

an artist book on reading the body
through trace, surface, and correspondence











Enter
Traces

Archive



















Surfaces

 Veins / Roots



Knee / Tree Knot


Wrist Tendon / Tree Grain


Skin / Bark




Traces

Not everything in the book is photographic. Rubbings, thread, translucent layers, and collected fragments make visible another kind of relation — one based not only on resemblance, but on contact, transfer, and touch. If the photographs bring body and nature close together, these materials allow them to leave marks on one another.

Rubbings


The rubbings carry texture from one surface to another. Unlike the camera, which observes from a distance, a rubbing is made through direct contact. It records pressure, friction, and the act of touching a form closely enough for it to leave a trace behind.



Thread


The red thread works less like illustration than like a visible tension — something connecting, stitching, or extending one form into another. In some pages it suggests veins, roots, branches, or lines of force; in others it acts more quietly, as a reminder that relation can also be physical.



Layers


Translucent paper, fabric, and inserted fragments create moments where the image is partly hidden, partly revealed. These layers slow down the act of reading. They make the book less immediate, but more intimate — something that has to be approached, lifted, and looked through.

Kexin WeiTop