Four Women

Four Women #

2019-2023

Four Women started in 2019, two years after my great-grandmother died. At that time, I started to go back to her house; where she used to live, and where we used to live together, to rediscover her stories. Giving life back to my grandmother’s past, rediscovering the stories of the women in my family I grew up with before they even became mothers and grandmothers –captivated by who they are and were as individuals.

Grown-up in China, I was taught that individuals subscribe to collective values, but brought up by three generations of women in my family, I found each woman has a rich and abundant life outside of their assigned roles by society. All this led me to see and understand myself through their eyes and through my images of them.

All four of us, through one another, have undergone 100 years of fast-paced changes in China. We have all been changed and engulfed by the times. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother never once dared claim they were feminists; still, embedded in me since my birth-given unisex name, how they raised me is who they’ve made me –a feminist, an artist.

Four Women, Installation View at Four Women, Solo Exhibition at Photographic Centre Peri, Turku Kunsthall, Finland, 2023

Grandma and laceleaf , from the series Four Women, Installation View at I Made You To Find Me at Berlin Art Week 2023, alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin, Germany, 2023

I lay on great-grandma’s bed, from the series Four Women, Installation View at I Made You To Find Me at Berlin Art Week 2023, alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin, Germany, 2023

Grandma’s tiktok, from the series Four Women, Installation View at Four Women, Solo Exhibition at BFoto Festival, Barbastro, Spain, 2022

Mom’s Drawer, as part of Four Drawers, from the series Four Women, 2019-2023, Pigment print on fabric, 100x100cm.

Clock, from the series Four Women, 2019-2022, Pigment print on wood, d30 x 5cm.

Four Women, from the series Four Women, 2022, Self-Published Artist Book, Handmade.