In the graduation exhibition, I saw the collective trauma of East Asian children

This article was originally published in Youthology, edited by Sharon.

"In the UK, I saw the collective trauma of East Asian children." One day I saw this post on social media. The photographer was crying while taking a series of photos about a girl trying to get herself out of the trauma of childhood and adolescence. At that time, "Wade to the Angry Sea" was released, and the graduation design exhibition project in London echoed the hot topics in China.

Later, I came across women's issues in different graduation thesis exhibitions. For example, there was a design of a female family tree so that women would no longer be the missing data in the family, and a work based on my grandmother's name made me rethink how to maintain the memory and emotions of my deceased relatives.

The identity label of "artistic overseas students" is often used as a joke or self-mockery in the context of the Internet. But at the same time, it is precisely because of these privileges that some East Asian girls can leave their native families and small towns, explore and express themselves in a wider space, and gain more experience, support and space to explore gender.

In this article, I want to share three female creators who impressed me and their creations. They are all international art students, but their personalities are very different. Suosuo is the kind of stubborn girl who is sensitive to the point of being distressing, YUYANG has a logical, rigorous but delicate personality, and 77 is very cheerful, emotional, and gentle. They all chose to explore the private emotions between women and family in their graduation works and turn them into art.

Perhaps their works are not so mature, perfect and outstanding in artistic expression, but their works are indeed the new generation of young women's thoughts on feminism, observations on family and society, and extremely sincere narration.

1. “I am a Pig”

—— Collective trauma of East Asian children

I saw this widely circulated video on social media in China, with the title "In the UK, I saw the collective trauma of East Asian children." The poster burst into tears while analyzing this photography work related to the pig head. "I suddenly burst into tears while watching it. Because the child kept saying something like: It's time to let go of the past, look to the future, and become a big sister, something like that."

In the video of the sharer, there is also a sentence "You are as dumb as a pig". This is a similar verbal bullying that many East Asian children have encountered in childhood and adolescence, from parents, schools, and society.

The comments section was filled with sadness. From being bullied at school to the words and actions of parents, the lack of confidence and inferiority led to strange behaviors during adolescence, like a tree hole telling the story of the trauma and panic left after being hit by East Asian society.

This work is called "Pig's Voice" and is divided into several parts, a set of documentary photography of a pig head and a set of perfect posters made by AI. On one screen, there are constantly scrolling messages like "How can you be as stupid as a pig?" "You are playing with your phone?" "Will the teacher wrongly accuse you?" "Look at others..." "If it weren't for you"... The pig head seems to be her true self, but what she wants to be is the pictures of those perfect people generated by AI.

Soso:

One of the works in my graduation thesis portfolio is shot around a "pig head". There is a pig head in all the photos because the phrase "I am a pig" has always been stuck in my heart and has accompanied me as I grew up.

Last July, I went back to China to shoot my graduation project and bought a pig's head for 200 yuan at the market. The pig's head was a microcosm of all the verbal violence I suffered as a child, much of which came from my mother.

My mother is a very good and strong woman. She hurt me, but I admired her. It was a very twisted mother-daughter relationship. Once, I told her that if it weren't for me, you would fly higher. I couldn't even imagine what you could do in your field. This was actually what she said to me before, "If it weren't for you, your father and I would have divorced a long time ago." "What have I done? Do I have to suffer this?"......

At that time, she was under a lot of work pressure and her relationship with my father had broken down. She often took out her anger on me, but when I took the initiative to take the blame on myself, she acted like she understood me and asked me why I thought that way. I was just overthinking. But only I knew how I watched myself get through this step by step.

The pig head in this set of photos looks lonely, because the scene where I placed the pig head is also a place that represents my childhood memories. I chose the police station because when I was a child, they would often call the police due to family conflicts, and the police were considered a positive image that would come to deal with things. The amusement park is a regret in my heart. When I was a child, they said they would take me to the amusement park when they were happy, and when they were unhappy, they would say, "How many points did you get in the exam? You still want to go to the amusement park?" This also led to my obsession with the amusement park.

I don't think I ever had adolescence. When I was in middle school and high school, I watched my cousin, who was one year younger than me, dye her hair, get tattoos, and drink alcohol, but I didn't dare to do the same. I lived in a state of fear and trepidation throughout my adolescence. I had to take care of my mother's emotions and couldn't provoke her with rebellious behavior. In the eyes of other families, I was a very well-behaved and obedient child.

I am very independent. I went to Hangzhou to study by myself when I was young. My mother didn’t care about me at all, and my father was not at home. Those relatives often joked that “no one wanted me”. Now thinking back to those jokes, I was actually a very insecure person.

In junior high school, I was also bullied in school, which left me with some sequelae in the group. I didn’t know how to get along with others. I was always very sensitive when interacting with others, and I would worry about what to do if the other person was unhappy. After a long time, I was very tired and gradually avoided socializing.

In another group of works, I used AI to design some posters similar to perfect women, which is something I dare not venture into deep in my heart. I used AI to design myself into the image of a model, a rock musician, and a sunny and cheerful image. These are the people I imagined myself to be when I was a child. If I were not in such a family, I might become a girl. It contains all my hopes for myself.

I always feel that I am no different from a pig. There was a period of time when I had serious body anxiety, and I really went on a diet to the point of fainting. But I have never been fat. From the perspective of adults, I am a very normal girl, neither fat nor thin. Why do I feel that I am a pig? In the movie "Spirited Away", her parents eat like pigs, and I thought I ate like that too. That is an image that I have transformed into myself in my mind.

I didn’t tell my mother, but my sister found out and said to me, “Sister, you live too much in other people’s world. Don’t you have your own world?” At that time, my sister was only 8 or 9 years old, which surprised me.

In contrast to my younger sister, I can clearly see what I have lost. My younger sister is a dozen years younger than me. She was also born under the circumstances of my father's preference for boys, but she was divorced when she was born a girl. My younger sister did not experience the terrifying family atmosphere that I once felt, nor did she feel the self-grievance of wanting to save face for my mother under the pressure of "preference for boys over girls". She now has a good personality and is very confident. She will express clearly, "Sister, I like this, I like it very much, and I will do this in the future." In addition, my mother is a little older and has become very fond of her children. I can see the side of my mother in my younger sister that I didn't see before.

I also selected a photo of my mother and I when we were kids and made a video. In the video, I used AI to learn my mother's voice, input a text, and then let "Mom" apologize to me.

You know what? When AI replicated my mother's voice, I got goose bumps all over my body. My mother's voice said words that she would never say, which was weird. At that time, I thought, it's actually good to grow up, at least I can use AI to make my mother apologize to me.

Finally, I turned off my mother's voice and replaced it with subtitles line by line, which means that I can now manually control the voices I don't want to hear anymore. In the next part, I recorded my own voice, and then used AI to synthesize the voice of my childhood, and talked to my childhood self.

What kind of girl was she when she was a child? She was very self-conscious and introverted, not very good at expressing her emotions, she kept everything in her heart and didn't dare to tell anyone. She was very tolerant and endured all the hardships, but she was very sensible.

In middle school, she often slashed her wrists, wanting to die, but she was completely unaware that she was self-harming. She would squeeze a can until the flat metal exposed its sharp corners, and then pierce her hand. Looking back, it was quite silly, but at the time I just felt good, and I enjoyed the blood flowing from my hands all over the floor. At that time, I was also unaware of my pain, thinking that I was just tired of my mother's scolding.

When I was working on this project, I was worried that it would not resonate with many people after it was completed. There are many people in China who have a bad relationship with their parents, but after going abroad, the people around me have a completely healthy family model. The state of sharing between them and their parents all the time also makes me fall into an inexplicable inferiority complex.

Once, I went out with a friend. It was 3 or 4 in the morning in China. She called her mother to ask if the dress was pretty. Her mother responded gently. I was shocked. A voice in my heart said, "It's impossible. I would never talk to my mother like that." At the same time, I also felt that I didn't deserve it. Until now, I still think, if I grew up in such a family, I would be a very happy child.

But I couldn't reconcile with my parents, I could only reconcile with myself. I couldn't tell my mother directly that all my lack of confidence and all my emotional exhaustion were because of you. I couldn't do that. Maybe this is what East Asian children are like. I felt that my conscience would be condemned. In the end, I had to rely on myself to understand and bear their limitations, so that I could breathe.

Many happy people cannot understand my work. It seems that the happier people are, the more they subconsciously avoid pain. Many of my friends are excellent in everything. They have a free family, free thoughts, and know how to express themselves. I envy them every time I see their status. So I am also very twisted. I am afraid that my classmates will come to my booth, "Don't come, I am a sewer rat, a dark and twisted rat."

Many foreign audiences don’t quite understand my work after watching it, and can only console me by asking, “Are you still sad now?” I would think that I can now express my psychological trauma in the form of a graduation exhibition, which means that I have let it go and “the boat has sailed through thousands of mountains.”

You ask me if I believe that unconditional love exists in this world? I will tell you very firmly that I think - no. It's sad, isn't it? But I think I have no choice.

2. Female Family Tree

——Women should not be the missing data in the family

Can you find your name in the family tree?

Since YUYANG and her grandmother have different surnames from other family members on her mother's side of the family, her grandmother often jokes with her that they are "outsiders" in the family. Titles like "grandmother" and "niece" also remind me that as long as we are "daughters", we are destined to become "outsiders" in our mother's family because of our surnames, even though we may have a closer relationship with our mother's family.

When she found that women's data was missing from the family tree, YUYANG designed and wove a female family tree with ropes - "Female Family Tree". Each rope carries the life data of a female family member. The different forms of knots represent six life events: birth, movement, marriage, childbirth, health and retirement. The different colors of wool represent education (green), unpaid work in society and family (pink and brown), and paid labor (blue). Each 4cm rope represents a year, and each short horizontal rope represents a national policy that a respondent believes has a significant impact on her or his female life.

YUYANG's grandmother was born in 1948, and the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. Her life trajectory is inseparable from the development of the People's Republic of China. The life changes and ideological development of three generations of female members in the family (grandmother, mother, aunt, and YUYANG) can be regarded as a small microcosm of three generations of women after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

YUYANG:

I studied data visualization at LCC College of the University of the Arts London, which is a sub-major of graphic design.

When I was preparing my portfolio for school applications, my teacher suggested adding some environmental and feminist related themes to help with my application. But later my teacher commented on me, "YUYANG, you can't be a feminist." She said it was because my life was not sharp and I lived too happily.

After the school started, I kept thinking about this question. So in my first semester project, I tried to design something related to gender gap. After that, most of my projects were actually related to gender, including my graduation project.

I once saw a post on Douban asking for help. The poster said that although she had awakened to women's consciousness, she had no data or theoretical support when she was discussing science with others or arguing online. She hoped that everyone could recommend some feminist books or reports to her. The recommendations in the comment section were basically books by foreign feminist scholars. There was a book called "Invisible Women", which used data to list the standards of male dominance in various industries, but the book only mentioned China three times.

So I thought, let’s create a comprehensive database of data, theory, and the development of local feminist movements, and I started interviewing women around me. When I interviewed my grandma, I joked with her during the voice call, “Think about what interesting stories you have in your life? Or as a woman, what do you want to say? Get ready.” But my grandma suddenly became very nervous and subconsciously rejected me, “What can I say to you? Go interview your grandpa.”

I was quite shocked at the time, because I think my grandmother is the current situation of most Chinese women. Most women still cannot escape the consciousness of being a subordinate role in the family or society. I want to do a project as a small opportunity to help everyone realize the patriarchal environment. Women can be independent and establish connections with the wider society.

The guest speaker in the first semester was Professor Xiang Fan from the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University. She mentioned a project she and her husband had done called "Enhanced Family"[1], which used programming to compile a genealogy database from ancient times. At that time, a student asked if there was any female data in this data. The professor said regretfully that it was difficult to find female data because traditional genealogy records basically record male information and the relationships between men.

At that time, I wrote down the concept of "female family tree" in my memo. Through the story of my grandmother, I wanted to go deeper. The traditional Chinese family tree is a database centered on the relationship between father and son. In connection with patriarchy, it has caused many subtle effects on the concept of family: the relationship between women and men, or the close relationship between female family members is ignored (for example, the maternal family is more likely to be called "outsiders"). Then the relationship between women and women has become the missing data in the traditional Chinese family tree. I think this is a good research direction.

But in the process of searching for information, I found that China's initial data was difficult to find, and there was no systematic database open to the public for query. The reports on the official website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China were very general, and each report selected and processed the original data. So I gave up on doing big projects and focused on my own personal information, looking for the first-hand data I could find, and presenting it through interviews.

I interviewed the three female members of my family who were closest to me: my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt. I created a female family tree for the four of us. Actually, my grandmother has a younger sister and a daughter, a small branch, but they were not able to join in because they were abroad and had limited time.

Finally, I chose to present the installation by weaving, because in traditional culture, sewing and weaving are closely related to the role of women as mothers, just like the poem "A loving mother sews clothes for her son". Most Chinese women invest a lot of time in these two things, but as women themselves, they do not get much reward from this work. The time they spend on their family and children is not equal to the time they spend on themselves.

I want to record women's life stories through knitting and winding yarn, and spending time on it. The process of knitting ropes is very time-consuming. When I knit at home, I always wonder what women in the past, as mothers and wives, were thinking when they were doing these boring and repetitive tasks?

This project really changed my grandma's perception of herself. During the project, I kept reporting the progress to my grandma. For example, I would tell her that my teacher was particularly interested in her story; when I finished braiding her rope, I would also tell her that her rope was the longest and richest. After the project started, many Chinese girls came to discuss this work with me, and we exchanged stories about our grandmas and grandmothers. When I told my grandma about these experiences, she changed from being nervous and uneasy at the beginning to being very happy to accept it.

I think I have conveyed my ideas to her. Women can certainly tell their own life stories independently, rather than being a vassal of men. In fact, my grandmother is really like a small satellite of my grandfather, revolving around his life. My grandfather is well educated, and she has a kind of admiration for him. When they have opposing views, my grandmother will change her views very smoothly and naturally and move closer to my grandfather.

When I was making the female family tree, I thought of my grandmother many times. She died when I was in fifth grade. She was a typical female figure who was ignored and neglected. She had bound feet and she had no name. The name engraved on the tombstone was my grandfather's surname with a "c" added.

This project also includes a larger context related to policy changes. Housewives mentioned Chinese policies that have had an impact on their lives. This part is difficult to express with four ropes, so I added a booklet as a supplement. By comparing the length of the green yarn wrapped around each rope, it is obvious that the length of time women receive education has increased with the development of the times.

My grandmother only received six years of education. At first I thought it was because of the traditional concept that girls should not study too much, or because of the uneven distribution of resources that favored boys over girls. But my grandmother's answer was, "During the Great Leap Forward, it was difficult for everyone to get food. When I was supposed to go to junior high school, the school in the village was closed, and both boys and girls dropped out."

The policy has both positive and negative impacts. For example, my mother felt that the family planning policy forced her to have only one child, and the IUD also brought many complications and inflammation, but on the other hand, it also helped her to be liberated from the family. During the research process, I also saw that many policies in my grandmother's articles promoted gender equality, while my generation turned negative. For example, some policies that urged women to reproduce exacerbated the current situation of gender inequality.

Many people still have the impression of data visualization as a report or statistics-related concept. My project is actually based on a theory called "data humanism" that was proposed in recent years. It is not like the rational, very large data connection, but the embodiment of each person's life node, which is small data.

The awkward part of this project is the audience. Because it is a graduate exhibition abroad, the women who come to see it are mostly young women and students who already have independent consciousness, and the female audiences I really want to influence find it difficult to access my work. Now I can only promote it vigorously on domestic social platforms. Maybe there are some opportunities to enter public places such as shopping malls or cinemas as a collaborative installation. This is the group I hope to fit in.

3. Grandma’s name

——Death and memories of loved ones

Do you know and remember your grandmother's name? Do you know what kind of life they lived when they were still alive? Or, how they were remembered or forgotten after they passed away?

This work was born out of a very personal thought. The exhibition site is a corner with yellow warm light. A quilt is used as an installation. Red silk threads hang her real conversations with other friends who have lost their loved ones. This is not a complicated creation, but because of personal memories, it is particularly soft and reaches the inner corners of many people.

77:

I don't remember my grandma's name.

I love visiting cemeteries in the UK, it makes me feel very calm. One day, I went to the cemetery as usual, thinking about my graduation thesis and relaxing at the same time. When I saw the epitaph, I suddenly thought of my grandma. In an instant, I realized something - I don't seem to remember her full name.

I was very surprised and found it hard to accept. My grandmother and I had a deep relationship and grew up with her. She has passed away for nine years, but I still think of her in those small moments in my life, and those beautiful memories are also in my mind. When I was a child, I often did my homework on the small table next to my grandmother's bed. But I actually forgot her name, someone who was so important to me.

This made me realize that in our culture, when we are with our relatives or close friends, names are always blurred and hidden under multiple identities, especially grandmothers and female elders, who are often called "someone's mother". Some younger generations know that they are very close people, but they don't even know her full name. So I think a person's name is very important. It is a trace left by him/her.

This became an opportunity for me to create, and I wanted to explore our memories of our deceased relatives and how to fight against the fading of memories. I would collect my grandmother's belongings, the photos that still exist, the conversations between family members, and write letters to her. In the process of writing letters, many forgotten memories were slowly brought back.

In addition to time, I found that as a younger generation in the family, even when my grandmother was alive, people didn’t talk about her name much, and her friends had all grown old and passed away. And my grandmother’s family tree has been lost for many generations, which makes me feel very sad. When I discussed her image with other family members, I found that my version was different, and everyone kept a part of her.

The final form of this work is a quilt, a warmer medium. My grandma couldn't eat sugar in her later years because of diabetes. She loved sweets and often hid oranges in her quilt, leaving one for me every time. The quilt itself is an important memory medium for me. Secondly, the quilt is very daily, but it is also a soft object that makes people feel safe. When it covers you, you will feel very safe.

One corner of the quilt is embroidered with names, and the name of my grandma is on the left atrium. I used the sewing skills my grandma taught me to embroider it crookedly, stitch by stitch, and it was like repairing those memories. Later, I also embroidered the memories of other people I interviewed on it. During the chat, I also created a space for others to safely confide their memories of their deceased relatives.

The archives hanging by the red line above the work are not just my memories of my grandma, but a starting point. The entire project also includes many other people's most memorable scenes, dying words, or a memory carrier of their deceased relatives. Sometimes an object is like a thread in the memory. Once you find that thread, the whole thread will come out.

Through conversations with family members, I found that the reason for forgetting is not just time, but after she left, in order to avoid sadness, we gradually stopped talking about her stories and memories of her. I think memories are like reefs on the seabed. The longer time passes and the less we touch them, the higher the sea level will be. One day, the tide will rise and fall and the reef will never be exposed again. That day will exist.

4. Final

Before the article was published, Suosuo expressed to us the pain she felt in telling the story. On the one hand, she hopes that people who read her story, girls who have also experienced trauma from East Asian families, can let go of it like she did. As she said in the video, "I hope more people like you can come out of the shadows."

But when the article was about to be published, she fell into self-doubt. She was still worried, "Is this a test for me? It makes me realize that I don't have the courage to tell everyone about my experience." She was also afraid of hurting her mother. "Parents love you, but not that much. When you really start to want to tell your story, you worry about whether it will hurt them."

This seems to be the contradiction that East Asian children and East Asian women experience when they talk about trauma. They cannot completely focus on their own expression and ignore the feelings of those around them. It always takes great courage for women to leave and talk about trauma.

In addition to these three creators, we also saw some using embroidery, knitting and dance to tell and heal the traumatic process of East Asian mother-daughter relationships, designing a VR game to simulate the change from anorexia to bulimia in eating disorders, and restoring the stories about wives in male-centered families in the 1980s and 1990s...

Like YUYANG, 77 and many other young female creators, they also try their best to present those invisible, neglected and unspoken issues about self and women in their designs. They all express honest emotions and strive to create in their own way.

编注： [1] 此处“增强的家族”研究论文原题目为Enhanced Family Tree: Evolving Research and Expression。