活着
To Live
Printmaking animation, 6 min, 4K, ongoing
Set in rural China in the 1970s, the animation reflects the memories of three generations of women in the same family, highlighting how cultural mores continue in a different time and space than the documentary footage, expanding the historical context.
I tried to move from documenting my grandmother's memories to writing a surrealistic story of three generations of women's experiences, memories, pain, and sweetness, mainly in the form of prints, with the help of computers, and to edit the prints into animation. I integrated my grandmother, my mother, and myself into the protagonists of the animation, embodied by two female figures—a middle-aged mother and a young girl. My animation clips unfold in black and white, the texture of the printmaking technique called etching weaves an eerie atmosphere that distills real life into a haunting visual form.
I chose to use etching to create the more fixed background parts of the animation, which require fine detail, and gel press to create those images that require a lot of movement. Aquatint is a technique that gives a fine texture to my images and produces a different result every time I print (for the same plate). After accepting the certain uncertainty that comes with the technique, I used aquatint to create the hazy tones in my images.
The long history of printmaking has a calm and steady quality, just like my grandmother. Etching demands tremendous physical effort and time, mirroring my grandmother’s decades of relentless agricultural labor. The inherent materiality of this practice—the hardness of the metal plates, the sharp engraving needles—finds an echo in the rigid, heavy, and at times, brutally sharp tools of formwork. The act of "engraving" is, in itself, an invasive process that leaves scars—akin to the moments in Chinese history when women’s lives were marred by cold, unyielding forces. Moreover, in a contemporary context, etching holds a unique significance. In an era where most media seek ever-greater efficiency, etching stands as an outlier, compelling the artist to focus entirely on the medium itself, sapping patience and stamina.