Consisting of instructions, black ink, paintbrushes, tweezers, and two bowls—one full of white rice, and the other empty, the viewer is invited to enact a gesture. Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s Hourglass instructs the viewer to select and paint a grain of white rice black, then place it into the adjacent, empty bowl. This repeated action contributes to the tracking (and passing) of time, and allows for meditation on the symbolism of this gesture. The gesture of painting white rice to black renders the food inedible and the product becomes an archive of the action and marker of time. The whiteness of the rice represents the absence of colour, whereas the ink contrasts this with its opposite. Dong sets up this gesture to embrace not just colour, but the darkest colour as a performative metaphor for the shifting power relations between the West and the rest.