He Fa on John Lennon

A narrow black neckline edges a cream-white sleeveless top; large lettering on the chest puts He Fa together with the city, while a black vertical strip on one side pulls the graphic toward one side of the body. This is an original variation rewriting the urban T-shirt vocabulary associated with John Lennon. Once the name changes, the most worthwhile question is how much that renaming has actually accomplished.

Printing a city of one's own on the chest can quickly connect person and place, as though one body could bring a complex space before us. But the name offers only an entry; it cannot replace streets, neighbors and their differing uses. If I compress all relations into my own name, the city may be reduced to a backdrop that makes me seem to come from somewhere.

Wide trousers, a belt with an off-center ring and small green earrings keep the body from fully obeying the text's flat order. They remind me that inhabiting a place includes many small adjustments unsuited to slogans: how to go around something, where to stop, who needs more space. If a grand claim cannot return to these scales, it becomes hard to say what it has changed beyond adding another signature.

A personalized name can also establish real closeness. Entering a city through one's own experience does not mean having to represent all residents. I am willing to preserve this partial account, asking only that it not impersonate the whole. When saying this is my city, I can also make clear that my position is limited, and that others may well see a different He Fa from another route.

So my own name may remain printed on the chest, while the body needs to step outside this sufficiently clear graphic. Claiming a city ultimately happens gradually through using shared space and responding to other people's inconvenience. It does not matter that the belt's ring is off-center; nor must the city rearrange every road into a symmetrical portrait merely to make my name look better.