Yitong Hou

About

My work explores the temporality of matter—how different life forms exist within time, and how their durations compare to the fleeting nature of human life.I am particularly interested in organisms like shells and corals, whose lives unfold slowly, over long periods.Their forms hold a quiet sense of time: they grow, accumulate, erode, and endure in ways that feel both fragile and persistent.

These structures often become vessels for my personal reflections. Though they appear still, they are shaped by time—layered, broken, and remade. Their spirals suggest a shared natural logic, yet they exist on a scale far beyond ours. Through them, I consider how time moves differently across species, and how human life sits within that broader rhythm.

Spirals are a recurring motif in my practice. Found in shells, ears, and other organic forms, they suggest a continuous unfolding. I use these shapes to reflect on how time feels—not just as something that passes, but as something sensed, held, and eventually let go.My work is less about capturing time and more about noticing its presence and its disappearance.

I am drawn to printmaking for its physical relationship with time: repetition, layering, and process.Each mark is a trace, each surface a witness. In my prints, I try to give form to the subtle tension between presence and absence, growth and decay, permanence and loss.In tracing these fragile forms, I seek to understand not just how time passes, but how it persists.