Reflections on my brother, time, and creation
For many years, I struggled to understand my role in relation to my brother.
Like many families living alongside disability, I searched for answers through institutions, diagnoses, therapies, support systems, and structures. Some helped. Many did not.
Over time, I came to realise that the question was never how to change my brother.
The real question was how to allow him to exist fully.
As my own artistic practice developed, I found myself returning again and again to the story of Michelangelo.
When asked how he created David, he famously replied that the sculpture already existed within the block of marble. His task was simply to remove everything that prevented it from being seen.
I often think about this image.
Not because I believe my brother needs to become someone else, but because I believe that every human being carries within them a form waiting to emerge.
My role is not to create Hengtong.
My role is to help remove the obstacles that prevent him from being visible.
To create conditions.
To open doors.
To make space.
To trust.
For many years, disability occupied the centre of the conversation surrounding my brother’s life. Today, what interests me is something entirely different.
What happens when we stop focusing on limitations and begin paying attention to presence?
What happens when we allow a person to develop through repetition, observation, making, silence, and time?
What happens when art ceases to be a profession and becomes a way of inhabiting the world?
This project is not simply about supporting an artist.
It is also about discovering another way of living.
I do not see the years ahead as a burden to carry.
I see them as a work to be built together.
If I am fortunate enough to accompany my brother throughout the rest of his life, I wish to do so with creativity, attentiveness, and dignity.
Perhaps this too is an artistic practice.
Not the art of producing objects.
But the art of creating the conditions in which a human being can unfold.
In this sense, this project belongs as much to life as it does to art.
And perhaps the two have never truly been separate.
If Michelangelo removed the stone to reveal David, then perhaps my role is simply to remove the obstacles that prevent Hengtong from appearing fully in the world.
And perhaps, in helping him emerge, I am also discovering parts of myself that had been waiting patiently to emerge as well.