Mulan:

 

 

My work considers the active space between reality and dream. Dream, the signifier of unreality is for me a coded language that has yet to be translated, interpreted, and censored by convention and the logics of reality. I create dystopian dreamscapes by processing and reassembling recurring imagery such as human figures, insects, and natural landscapes.

 

While learning a variety of print-based techniques, including woodcut, monotype, etching, and photo-lithography, I was initially drawn to the boundaries and connection between spaces. In my earliest work, I used black and white processes to emphasize the composition of dissected and layered spaces. I wanted to construct dreamlike narratives that appeared to exist independently and be logical in their own ways.

 

 

inkjet print, typeset

 

woodcut, linocut, embossment

 

video installation

 

woodcut on laser-engraved paper

all on view in the Jewett Gallery

 

 

My most recent work is a more direct consideration of my own identity by way of space, gender, and language. It reflects my Chinese experience in ways that I have intentionally avoided until now. As the Covid-19 pandemic began to unfold, the political and social realities of life back in China intensified. Absurd bureaucratic policies caused numerous inconveniences and tragedies, while the voices of individuals were brutally silenced. As an international student in the US, I found it important to feel and to find a way to express the emotions that were being buried under the weight of this reality. As our homes turned into places of confinement, we could only travel freely in dreams, giving mundane subjects, and even ourselves, new meanings. I believe in the existence of a collective consciousness, a special wavelength that can be reached by modulating dreams of individuals, the one place that cannot be surveilled.

 

 

In my work, I combine traditional and experimental printing methods to layer color, imagery, and pictorial space. My processes are in constant conversation with my images. I'm fascinated by the materiality of different print methods: the organic texture and resistance of wood, the fluidity and spotaneity of monotype... They possess a temporal quality that condenses the passage of time into a frozen moment, allowing fleeting moments to be preserved.

 

Symbolism and Surrealism have become important conceptual influences and reference points for my work as I keep returning to the ineffable-dreams, complex emotions, and feelings. Through this investigation, I hope to give visual form to the unspoken reality in which I live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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