Circulation

Circulation: Cupping, Colour, and Collective Sensing is an interactive installation and making workshop about care gestures as interfaces between bodies. It grows from Korean hand acupuncture (수지침) and from cupping traditions known as giác hơi in Vietnam, bekam in Malaysia and Indonesia, and 부항 in Korea.

Three handheld cups each carry a pressure sensor and a pulse sensor. The hold is the gesture: how firmly and steadily a hand presses is read, after the O-ring test, as its present state rather than a fixed body type. Each reading is mapped to the Five Elements colour framework (오행): Wood green, Fire red, Earth yellow, Metal white, Water blue. Each cup glows the colour of the hand that holds it. As three people press in tune, their colours move toward one shared colour.

This is artistic research, not medical advice. Nothing touches the skin with suction, and the Five Elements are used as a cultural coordinate system, not as science.

Air Kuala

For Petua Air at Multimedia University the work is titled Air Kuala. Kuala is the Malay word for a confluence, where rivers meet. The Hap (합 · hợp · 合) is a round table, 100 cm across, with three cup seats and a bowl of water at its centre. Each visitor presses a cup with all five fingers, and each finger lights its own element colour. The light runs along a river in the tabletop to the bowl. When the three hands press differently, ripples start on each side and cross. When they come into tune, the water fills with one shared colour and its light moves on the ceiling. Visitors never touch the water.

Holding Together

The making workshop begins with one question: who set out water for you when you were unwell, and how? Participants build a sensing finger pad, shape a glowing clay cup around it, and map a memory of care. Groups of three then try to press in tune. The first session runs in Ho Chi Minh City on November 27, 2026, and a second session is planned at MMU in January 2027.

Showings