Ma Qiusha: All my Sharpness comes from your Hardness

This 26-minute-long video made in 2011, All My Sharpness Comes from Your Hardness, allowed Ma Qiusha to freely explore displaced memory. The footage shows only Ma’s legs and feet wearing ice skates as she is being dragged backward across a variety of road surfaces in Beijing. The skates go from blunt to razor sharp depending on the road surface. The road showed is the one she used to walk from her grandmother’s to her home. When she was young, she walked it many times. This video is an allegory on the tortuous journey that Ma has traveled since those days of walking to her grandmother’s house, it is an autobiography of sorts.