Taking inspiration from the Chinese Tang Dynasty poem Song of the Wanderer, the project begins by re-interpreting this famous symbol of filial duty and examining its relationship to the experience of a Chinese Parachute Kid studying in the US. Through live-action cinema, machinima, and sculptural forms of expanded cinema, the work also connects the artist’s various global identities into a more extensive bodily form that meditates on loss, memories, and desire. The artist is interested in the power dynamic inherent in filial duty and the enforcement of structures between a parent and child under centuries of influence from Confucianism. This familial power dynamic also parallels the tension between the East and West within China and the US’s historical past, which all weaves into the larger backdrop of the Parachute Kid identity. Threads are used as a symbol of care and woes in the original poem and represent lines of fate in Chinese culture. Red denotes both blood connections and the ever-presence of China’s political present and past. Wrapping threads around five cultural/recollection objects, the actor performs a filial ritual mediating the tension between love and guilt. From bond to bondage, the child desperately tries to hold on while becoming more suffocated. 

On the sculptural body, Chinese, Pinyin (phonetic spelling of Chinese), and English versions of the poem are sewn across the sheets of fake tattoo skins in red threads, turning them into a quilt that covers the pedestal which the computer screen (not a portal, but an interface) sits on. The labor in the sewing process becomes the outpour of love and care as each child of diaspora sews in thoughts of their mother. With each stitch, mimicking the motion of wrapping threads around these significant personal and cultural objects within the video, the sewing process for the sculpture also becomes a formal ritual of filial piety where role reversal itself is the most authentic symbol of growing up, growing pain, and growing old. 

LINK TO TRAILER

AWARDS 
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Experimental Shorts category at Slamdance Film Festival 2023  Winner of Best Experimental Film at Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation and Technology 2023 
Winner of Best Web & New Media at Independent Shorts Awards 2023
Semi-finalist at Blow-up Art House Film Fest Chicago 2023

EXHIBITIONS / VIDEO SCREENINGS
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) Emerging Curator’s Grant Video Screening 2024
OXY ARTS Video Screening Series 2024 
FOCA (Fellows of Contemporary Art) Curators Lab Exhibition Grant: In the depth of the mouth inhabits the light that takes shape 2023 
LA Artcore October Group show Alien Race: Envisioning Sites of Our Future Ancestors 2022
UCLA MFA 22 THESIS SHOW: POETIC REALITIES

San Diego Asian Film Festival 2023
Slamdance x AGBO Private Industry Screening 2023
Slamdance x The Chimaera Project: LA Women Make Films 2023
LA Underground Film Forum 2023
IFFY PSI (Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti): Underground Picnic #2 2023

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