Before Shanghai, I travelled alone to my hometown Chaoyang — my first trip back in seven years. I found myself in an unfamiliar position: an adult guest in my own family, so far removed by space and time that I could observe my relatives as individual entities for the first time, watching their daily exchanges and gestures as expressions of care, responsibility, pride, and hierarchy. Throughout my time in China, I noticed over and over the intertwining of care and control, love and ownership, fragility and possession in both interpersonal relationships and public life, even within surveillance culture. At what point can one claim themself a victim if love must hurt? What are the invisible contracts that underlie intimacy?

My work at this residency grew out of these observations. A series of six small paintings serves as vignettes of tenderness and containment. A ladder-like installation of air-drying bitter gourd slices recalls the way my grandmother preserves hers, embodying the duality of preservation and decay. A hanging cricket cage holds a double-sided miniature painting, echoing the intertwining of nurture and restraint. Its title, The Loneliest Child in the World, is drawn from a line in The Last Emperor, in which the young Puyi shows more fascination with a cricket than with matters of state. China’s last emperor, Puyi lived a life swung between luxury and destitution, remaining as powerless as an insect in captivity. It is said that after the death of his beloved wife Wanrong, he attempted to speak with her spirit through die xian, a Chinese adaptation of the Western Ouija board. One side of the miniature painting in my work depicts the imagined séance scene. Finally, Bated Breath combines a second-hand music box inscribed with a misspelled English love poem and a painting of my own childhood impulse to capture butterflies to keep for myself. Taken together, these works invite viewers to reflect on the ways we hold and are held, and to feel both the comfort and unease within the fragile enclosures of everyday life.

这次来上海之前，我独自一人回到了家乡朝阳。七年来第一次回乡，我发现自己处在一个陌生的位置，以成年人的身份在自家作客，而且没有父母的陪伴。离家太久的同时长大成人，让我第一次能够将我的亲人们视为独立的个体，观察他们的日常举止、言行，以种种方式表达着对我、对彼此的爱护和权威。在中国的一个多月里，我不断注意到这种二元性——不管是在家庭关係里，还是职场、公共生活以及社会系统（例如监控文化）中，都体会到了关怀所带来的控制欲，脆弱反面的占有欲。如果爱注定会为被爱者带来伤痛，我们可否有权称自己为受害者？亲密关系的背后，隐藏着哪些无形的契约？

我本次驻地展览的作品源于对此的观察与思考。一系列六幅小画作的参考来源于我在家乡所拍的照片，如同柔情与管制的缩影。一件梯子一样的装置作品晒满了风干的苦瓜，模彷了姥姥在家晾晒苦瓜的方式，表达了保藏和腐朽的两面性。链条悬挂的蝈蝈笼里放置了一幅双面微型画，标题《世界上最孤独的孩子》取于电影《末代皇帝》中的台词，片中的小溥仪相比朝廷大事，对大臣怀里的一只蝈蝈更感兴趣。溥仪的一生时而富贵、时而窘迫，如被囚禁的昆虫一样身不由己，传说在挚爱的婉容死后曾尝试用碟仙与她的鬼魂对话；我的蝈蝈笼中微型画的一面便描绘了碟仙的画面。《屏息》利用跳蚤市场买到的二手音乐盒和上面蹩脚的英文情诗，以及记忆中小时候想把蝴蝶捉起来自己观赏的冲动，邀请观众一起思考我们对待彼此、对待其他生命的方式，并感受这些瞬间中的自然与不安。