Wish by the Sea is a video work documenting the artist's personal experience of leaving home and wandering across the world for more than ten years. It expresses the deep emotional yearning for the departed family member and the lived experience of in-betweenness and exile.
The video shows how the artist learnt to cook a home-style dish from childhood as an attempt to reconnect with her grandmother. Through the juxtaposition of the cooking and Sydney's landscape and seascape, the artist highlights the significance of food for the Chinese diaspora. The fish becomes an embodiment of memory, tradition, and loss. The taste from home is a thread that connects this generational relationship, and the Sea becomes a place that evokes a sense of exile, which Edward Said described as "an unhealable rift between a human being and a native place" and "essential sadness". Wish by the Sea was created during the pandemic and was filmed entirely in Sydney when the artist was forced to be separated from her family. It conjures an intimate and poetic audio-visual narrative by synthesising moving images, food, sound and narration.
Exhibition:
2021
The Third Place, Kudos Gallery, Sydney
Yi 易，Manning House, the University of Sydney
2020
Rollout Dance Film Festival, Macau
Hospital Becoming Art Museum" project, Guangzhou Times Museum
Today's Special Program, Jumping Frame Festival, Hong Kong