14+7

“14+7” is “21.” This is merely a meaningless sentence of math when it’s placed on any blank sheet of paper, but if it wasn’t limited to its form of just a few numbers, it may mean much more. In these pages, the definition of “14+7” sheds away its confining skin of a simple math problem, but ironically becomes the language of limitation. December 1st, 2019 was a beginning as well as an end.

It was the beginning of the last month of 2019, a beginning of the end of 2019. It was also the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a beginning of being limited. Limited to one person, one room, and zero meaning. It was an ending to the plurality in our lives.

As a result of this pandemic, hundreds of millions of people alone in China have been quarantined, each for 14+7 days. 21 days or 3 weeks, but infamously known as “14+7.” In all of the 14+7 days that many have been isolated for, we became restricted. Had we not been restricted, we could have meant much more. The physically burnt-through photography and typography in this book embodies the deterioration of meaning during years of “14+7.” It manifests the myriad of meanings we lost in our lives.

As soon as the 14+7 days are over, you earn the right to relaunch into society, but not a free society. From December 1st, 2019 to July 13th, 2022, 955 days have passed. That is 955 days, 45 "14+7s" of suffocating restriction. Without it, how many more meanings could our lives have manifested?