Year: 2024

Materials: Multi-media; xuan paper

Description:

Cinnabar is a public art project on the roof.

It incorporates a carpet patchworked with sores of Chinese Xuan paper, a common material used to seal windows in the revolution era, with painted images inspired by the Cultural Revolution and a specially built pair of pointe shoes that could excrete ink according to my movements.

By constructing this large-scale piece with my body, I endeavoured to have my audience engage in a transhistorical understanding by expressing the tumultuous history of the Bolshoi Ballet and its transformation into a propaganda tool after being disseminated in China. This is also achieved by a modern imitation of the fanatical zeal of the Red Guards, a group often alienated by the dominant narrative of the Cultural Revolution, during the revolutionary tide, deconstructing their mania to be driven by the tempting idea of partaking in a greater cause influenced by propaganda. Staging the performance on the roof places this imitation in a larger context of modernity when our historical identity needs to be reconsidered and n a broader discourse of humans’ subjection to external forces.

*The video shows the dance on the finished drawing.

Year: 2024

Materials: Multi-media

Description:

Cocoon is a feminist play that addresses the entangling relationship between mothers and daughters that the artists have witnessed and undergone as a sharing experience through physical movements and poetic dialogues.

Recycled paper boxes and strings are used to create the cocoon in the centre of the stage to minimise the waste and represent the ‘reused’ patriarchal ideologies as the source of tragedy by forcing females into strict social roles with specific expectations to fulfil. Internalising these expectations results in a relationship where love gives birth to conflicts while conflicts eventually become a part of love.

All dialogues are in Chinese to ensure the authenticity of the story.

Role: Leader, Choreography, Performer

Year: 2024

Materials: Multi-media

Description:

This is the first piece created by my club, performed at a feminist play showcase.

The performance explores how patriarchal society objectifies and disempowers women's bodies, and how women struggle to reclaim control. The centrepiece is an installation featuring a female silhouette draped in white cloth, representing women as a collective in an abstract and generic form. As performers are bound to this figure one by one, it illustrates how patriarchal society has suppressed women across generations, gradually eroding their rebellious spirit and will to fight for their rights. The performers eventually break free from their ropes, and the stark contrast between the red handprints they paint on themselves and their white shirts symbolises the bloody struggle required to realise that our bodies—our chest, our shoulders, every part—belong to us alone. The piece concludes by revealing that the central female silhouette, constructed from everyday objects, itself represents the objectification of women in a patriarchal society.

Year: 2024

Materials: Multi-media

Description:

Ajar exhibits an absence of sculpture/installation by obscuring it with an opaque textile while being accompanied by a projection of a striking and directional description of what is covered. Thus, the completion of the artwork requires the viewer’s imagination.

On one hand, by forcing the audience to reimagine the hidden sculpture, Ajar intends to provoke the viewers’ consciousness of this viewing and interpreting process, engaging them in reflecting on visual assumptions. On the other hand, the juxtaposition of a telling description and a concealed object also wishes to address the power dynamics between the viewer and the viewed in an art gallery setting, asking questions: what do you see? How much is this “seeing” affected by the assumed power of the messages conveyed by the artist and the curator? Do we still have the freedom of interpretation?

Year: 2024

Materials: Wood, Paper, Concrete

This interactive installation is inspired by the Beijing East Village art group living together in a cluster of cottages in rural Beijing and their experiences of mutualist art-making.

The work wishes to provoke reflections on the transformation of residential organisations from being horizontally oriented to vertically structured buildings, which shaped and reshaped the social interactions in a community. The interactivity of the installation allows the audience to actively engage in and think about the change in lifestyle from socialist collectivism to post-socialist individualism in China, providing a perspective of architectural evolution in interpreting Chinese contemporary history.