痛的翻譯
The Translation of Pain

《痛的翻譯》 是 Hemorrhoid Loans /《痔債》 展覽系列的第一章。這個系列以痔瘡作為入口，思考慢性痛楚、羞恥、家庭歷史、照顧、勞動，以及社會如何訓練我們沉默地忍受不適。

在 《痔債》 中，一種醫療狀況，或一個令人尷尬的身體問題，被理解為一種「身體債務」：它被累積、被繼承、被延後處理，並透過痛楚、勞動、沉默與照顧被一再償還。英文標題中的 Loans 指向一種債務結構：誰承受痛楚？誰被期待忍耐？誰提供照顧？而這些身體債務是否有可能被償還、翻譯，或轉化？

《痛的翻譯》 從一個治療室的影像開始。這個治療室最初出現在藝術家早前的作品 《The Piles We Carry》 中：兩張黑色椅子標示出一場治療關係，一邊屬於治療師，放着筆記；另一邊屬於病人，放着紙巾。在這一章中，這個治療室被以紙和木條重建成 1:1 的空間。紙的脆弱性令房間顯得臨時、不穩定，也暗示治療、醫學與診斷的權威可以被折疊、倒塌，甚至重新書寫。

作品與藝術家抵達挪威的第一天有關。當天，她經歷了嚴重的痔瘡發作，並在不久後被診斷。身體痛楚與羞恥幾乎同時進入她在挪威的生活，也展開了一段長時間在身體治療與心理治療之間穿梭的過程。慢慢地，症狀不再只是醫療問題，而成為一種信號：它讓人讀到情緒壓力、家庭沉默、親密關係、移民經驗與權力關係。

在 《痛的翻譯》 中，治療室成為一個痛楚被轉化的地方：從身體進入語言，從中文進入挪威語或英語，從私人的羞恥進入一個可被分享的結構。房間中的電話像一個翻譯者，使治療師與病人之間的對話變成三角關係，被距離、誤譯、依賴與權威共同塑造。

作品並不將痛楚呈現為奇觀，而是追問：痛楚如何在一個陌生制度中變得可讀？當一個人必須透過另一種語言、另一個人，或另一套制度來解釋私密的身體不適時，會發生什麼？在這個過程中，又有什麼被遺失、被柔化，或被扭曲？

作為 《痔債》 的第一章，《痛的翻譯》 聚焦於治療的開端：痛楚進入語言的時刻，羞恥進入房間的時刻，以及身體開始被理解為醫療與情感檔案的時刻。作品將治療視為不只是診斷或衝突的空間，也是一個協商與自我閱讀的空間——一個脆弱的房間，讓權力也許能慢慢轉化成修復。

The Translation of Pain is the first chapter of Hemorrhoid Loans /《痔債》, an ongoing exhibition series that uses hemorrhoids as an entry point to think about chronic pain, shame, family history, care, labour, and the social conditions that teach us to endure discomfort silently.

In Hemorrhoid Loans, a medical condition or embarrassing bodily problem is understood as a form of “body debt”: something accumulated, inherited, postponed, and repeatedly paid for through pain, labour, silence, and care. The word “loans” points to a structure of debt. Who carries the pain? Who is expected to endure it? Who provides care? And can such debt ever be repaid, translated, or transformed?

The Translation of Pain begins with the image of a therapy room. This room first appeared in the artist’s earlier work The Piles We Carry, where two black chairs marked a therapeutic encounter: one side belonging to the therapist, with notes; the other side belonging to the patient, with tissues. In this chapter, the therapy room is reconstructed at a 1:1 scale using paper and wooden sticks. The fragility of paper makes the room provisional and unstable, suggesting that the authority of therapy, medicine, and diagnosis can also collapse, bend, or be rewritten.

The work is connected to the artist’s first day of arriving in Norway, when she experienced a severe hemorrhoid flare-up and was diagnosed shortly after. Physical pain and shame entered her life in Norway almost simultaneously, beginning a long process of navigating both bodily treatment and psychological therapy. Over time, the symptom became more than a medical issue: it became a signal through which emotional pressure, family silence, intimacy, migration, and power relations could be read.

In The Translation of Pain, the therapy room becomes a place where pain moves from body to language, from Chinese to Norwegian or English, from private shame into a shared structure. The telephone in the room functions as a translator, turning the conversation between therapist and patient into a triangular exchange shaped by distance, mistranslation, dependency, and authority.

Rather than presenting pain as spectacle, the work asks how pain becomes legible within a foreign system. What happens when one must explain intimate bodily discomfort through another language, another person, or another institution? What is lost, softened, or distorted in that process?

As the first chapter of Hemorrhoid Loans, The Translation of Pain focuses on the beginning of treatment: the moment when pain enters language, when shame enters a room, and when the body begins to be understood as both a medical and emotional archive. The work considers therapy not only as a space of diagnosis or conflict, but also as a space of negotiation and self-reading — a fragile room where power might slowly become repair.