Jiao Xingtao
Unreachable
You may think that this box is made of cardboard. It's not! What you see here is marble.
There's something strange about the shape of the marble. There's something soft about it, as if it were clay. It's a mysterious package, don't you think? It's labelled 'outdoor sports', but there are Chinese characters too. They mean nylon tent.
Jiao looked very carefully at the original box. You can tell this by how precisely he copied it to create this piece. If you look at something very carefully, you might be able to copy it. But could you create something so convincing just like Jiao has done with this artwork?
Are you wondering about what's in the package? But the curiosity isn’t really about what’s actually in the box. The fascination lies on the outside: you think it's a package, but it's a block of marble! It looks so real that you automatically think it's a box and not a block of marble. But it really is.
When people don't collect their luggage, it's sent to a storage area. That's a place where things are stored – museums have them too. If the luggage has an address on it, the airport staff will send it on. If they can't find out who it belongs to, they sell it. In the US, there are special auctions of suitcases that were never collected. You can bid on a suitcase, but it's always a gamble. You don't know what's inside! What sort of suitcase would you bid on at a lost luggage auction?
People used to write a lot more letters than they do today, including postcards. Thanks to the internet, email, WhatsApp and modern communications, mail has changed. However, people now send packages much more often than they used to due to online shops and the expansion of parcel delivery services.
Close your eyes. Describe what you saw.