Ice Blueprint: Transcendence

​​

Transcendence is Xi Li’s first large-scale ice sculpture, debuted at the 51st Zhaolin Park Ice Lantern Festival—one of Harbin’s most historically significant ice and snow cultural events, witnessing the city’s enduring cultural relationship with ice since 1963. This video serves as archival documentation of the work.

​

The piece shapes local spiritual forms and visual language through manual ice transformation, totemic symbol evolution, and 3D reconstruction, using ice as a path to spiritual space. It poetically explores the cycle between material form, memory, and dissolution through the ephemeral yet collective-memory-laden medium of ice.

​

The work embodies the concept of a “critical natural object” — its ice sourced from the Songhua River, formed in extreme cold, and gradually melting as temperatures rise, returning to nature’s flow.

​

Transcendence signifies a transcendent act: from the materiality of ice to immaterial perceptual experience; from cultural symbolism to individual memory; and returning to deep connections with nature and ancestral land.

​

​​
 

《Transcendence》是Xi Li的首件大型冰雕作品，于第51届兆麟公园冰灯艺术展首次亮相——这是中国哈尔滨最具历史意义的冰雪文化盛会之一，自1963年起见证了这座城市与冰的深厚文化关联。此视频为该作品的档案记录。

​

作品通过冰的手工转化、图腾符号演化和3D重构，形塑在地精神形式与视觉语言，将冰作为通向精神空间的路径。借助冰这一瞬息即逝却沉淀着集体记忆的媒介，探索物质形态、记忆与消散之间的诗意循环。

​

该作品被赋予“临界自然物”的意义——所用冰材取自松花江，在极寒中凝结成形，随气温升高逐渐融化，回归自然流动过程。

“Transcendence”意指一次穿越性行动：从冰的物质属性出发，通向非物质的感知经验；从文化象征延伸至个体记忆；再回到自然与血缘土地的深层联结。

​

作品旨在还原精神性于自然与大地，创造一种新的“土著性精神容器”，重新构造文化期许、个体信仰与象征系统。通过对“圣杯”符号的拆解，探讨公共庆典与个体精神之间权力的物化形式。