Hold Me

VI. Hold Me

While my father was alive, he asked me to hold him every day. A minute, two, sometimes longer. He was old, his body had grown light, his bones pressed into me, his breath carried the smell of medicine. Only after he left did I understand what he gave me in that minute — all of his love, compressed into sixty seconds, the way a Dongba priest condenses the whole of Genesis into a single soul-path scroll.

In the painting, two black human figures embrace — no features, no clothing, only silhouettes. That is my father and me, and also every father and son, and everyone who must say goodbye. The scattered colour-specks in the background are the colours he loved in life, the thoughts that drifted through me when my mind wandered in that minute; the grey ink dots are the 「I'll hug him tomorrow」 deferrals, the regrets that nearly lost me forever.

Every day he was ferrying me — from the busy-ness of this shore to the peace of the other. Now the bridge is broken and that one-minute passage is closed forever.

《Hua Niao Dao》 is an island residency carried out by Mu Yuming from 17 September to 17 October 2025 on Huaniao Island, Shengsi, Zhejiang — arriving on the island twelve days after the death of his father on 5 September 2025. From the funeral to the sea wind.

A friend dreamed of the artist's parents walking hand in hand; his father said: 「Our child can stand on his own now.」 Finally, graduation.