“Xian” arose from the discovery of a curious folded paper sewing kit that Thomas Sauvin stumbled across in China. He developed the idea of populating this quirky object with faithful reproductions of vintage prints, which belong to the collection he has been acquiring from all over China for several years. Whenever one folds or unfolds the album, the eye and hand move back and forth across the fifty-nine boxes unveiling ninety remarkable prints. These very prints, selected from a vast archive, showcase: mentally disordered persons, coquettish women, amazed tourists and anonymous portraits among other strange celebrities who appear in black and white or in colour. “Xian” is a treasure trove of curiosities, an ideal assemblage of a memory in progress; it does not designate only the couturier’s thread, it also reifies the thread of a story, the story of many aspects of Chinese modernity.

《线》源于苏文在中国偶然发现的一个奇怪的纸艺缝纫包，这也正是苏文的灵感来源：将他在中国多年搜藏而来的老照片装进这个古怪迷人的盒子中。每当人们折叠或展开相册时，眼睛和手就会在59个纸匣上来回移动，揭开90张不同寻常的照片。从规模庞大的档案库中精挑细选的照片隐藏在包裹它们的黑匣子之中，谵妄的病患，风尘的女人，惊讶的游客们、怪异的名人轮番充当黑白亦或彩色照片的主角。《线》是一个装满奇珍的宝库，是一个正发生的记忆的理想集合。《线》所指的不仅是裁缝手中穿引的工具，更是贯穿一个故事的脉络，一个涉及中国现代性许多方面的故事。

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