HORSE GIRL + SELF CARE (2023)
3min, Video Installation
Through the central image of a Sim girl riding on a horse, galloping across a game landscape reminiscent of the American West, juxtaposed against the background layer of personal archival footage from Beijing and LA, I evoke themes of exploration, manifest destiny, the American dream against the internal desire to return home. However, the more time I spend in a simulated future and past, the more I am isolated from reality and the present. The circled image of the sim riding becomes twirled and mirrored over time; a journey to an undefined end turns endlessly into itself. It does not get any closer or more distant from the archival footage moving forward and backward. This phone-recorded footage of my past is the only evidence left of the places I have called home. Roads home are defamiliarized into Google Maps, and horoscope apps inform my every decision and feeling. Hope is simultaneously felt when constructing the artwork as an alternative space in the time of becoming. The work seeks to be the interface of an impossibility and becomes a space of possibility in the process. I root myself in my art-making and make this work first and foremost as an act of self-care and of finding a home, building spaces and moments of rest in the in-between. The work is an incantation looping across the desktop screen as I manifest for the future. The aura of becoming is present within the frames.