Liu Jia “Uselessness and Usefulness“

Liu Jia spent a year creating this work “Uselessness and Usefulness” with ink and acrylic paint on some 800 pieces of otherwise useless fallen leaves she gathered.

A seemingly cozy, welcoming armchair turns out to be a floating object drifting in a sea of leaves, accessible only by sight and mind. It’s a reflection of the essence of art as perceived by the artist.

Does it resonate with Zhuangzi’s teaching that true usefulness is derived from uselessness? Or, for a leaf that does not find its natural way to the soil, is “usefulness” nothing but a synonym of “uselessness”?