Returning Poetry to the Stomach by Sibo Sheyang

Sibo Sheyang, a Chinese conceptual and performance artist of Nuosu (Yi) descent, works between landscape, body, and language. Based in the Hengduan Mountains, his practice often involves acts of physical endurance and displacement, using natural materials to explore ecological, cultural, and personal boundaries.​

Returning Poetry to the Stomach begins with the relocation of twenty tons of soil from the artist’s homeland in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture into an urban exhibition space in Chengdu. Within this displaced terrain, grass seeds were planted to grow a poem over time.

During the exhibition, two sheep consumed the grass entirely, leaving only traces behind, before the soil was returned to its original landscape.​

The work unfolds as a cycle — extraction, growth, ingestion, and return — where language shifts from something read into something lived and metabolized. Rooted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the piece draws on the linguistic overlap between the word “positive” and “sheep” in Chinese, as well as the contrasting attitudes toward death between urban and rural environments.​

The installation engages multiple senses through the presence of soil, living grass, animals, and duration. Smell, movement, and the gradual transformation of the environment shape the experience, grounding the work in physical and temporal processes.​

Sustainability is embedded through this cyclical logic. Materials are not fixed but move, transform, and return, resisting permanence and emphasizing regeneration over extraction. By allowing poetry to grow, be consumed, and re-enter the land, the work proposes a form of progress rooted in ecological continuity, where meaning is carried through bodies, time, and landscape.