Shh! A Pause.

In Chinese primary and secondary schools, it is common to encounter a contradictory scene: a school may have a fully constructed football pitch surrounded by a synthetic running track, while the central field itself remains almost forbidden, rarely accessible to students.

For me, an empty football pitch has always contained a sense of absurdity. Functionally, it should be a space for movement, competition, and physical confrontation. It may also operate as a symbol of national pride, collective identity, and commercial capital. Yet when these functions are removed, leaving behind a field that remains unused, its original meaning begins to dissolve.

I began working with Chinese football as a subject in 2016. Shh! A Pause. consists of three large-scale woodcut prints. Using simplified lines, a limited colour palette, and vacant compositions, I depict a football pitch suspended in a state of inactivity. Here, “a pause” is no longer a brief interval within a match, but an apparently continuous condition: the field remains intact, while the game never begins.