“Out of the Blue – No. 3,” 2023. Size 160” x 120” x 84”
Materials: 3D printed objects, artificial flowers, laboratory equipments and accessories, plexiglass, dry flowers, grains, herbs

 “Out of the Blue” is an installation that examines gender and vulnerability associated with childhood memory. This work is a response of my earlier experience of gender discrimination in China. When I was in middle school, my chemistry teacher prohibited his female students, including myself, from using the laboratory. I was taught that studying chemistry, physics, and math was unnecessary because girls were not naturally gifted at those subjects.

I set up a blue environment for my installation to take place because I see blue as an open door to freedom. It is infinite, just like the sky. Blue is also a color associated with justice. In this work, I revisit my childhood memory, imagining the cold and the boys – only laboratory is a welcoming and colorful open playground where animals, flowers, and fruits take the place of humans. My methodology is to use the laboratory as a site of inquiry to create an inclusive space that supports diverse beings, gender equality, and human dignity. I playfully transform and reframe ideas of power, social control, and gender from a non – western and underwritten nonbinary perspective. By using lab equipment, faux flowers, 3D printed anthropomorphized animals, and other materials, I create a fantastical imaginary space that subverts and reimagines the aesthetics of patriarchy.

The past is still present. The patriarchal belief is an invisible mechanism. It reproduces itself endlessly through the social norms and structures that cause girls to hold back and stay silent. Through reconfiguring personal memory and bringing the past to the present, I hope this work will provide a space not only for question and reflection, but also for seeking altered states of consciousness that may lead to restoration of dignity and humanity.

This work has different sizes, the size can be adjustable based on spaces and locations.

Installation view at Art Gallery of Hamilton as part of group exhibition, WONDER. For more info about this exhibtion, pleas visit here.
Exhibition date : September 23, 2023 – January 7, 2024