CLOSE, CLOSER
2020-2021

Drawing from the artist’s mother Wang Qingli’s 1993 expedition to Lugu Lake in Yunnan, China, the video overlays drawings, archival images, historical paintings, texts and sounds to reimagine Wang’s Lugu Lake Paintings (1994), which were later sold and unable to be found.

Structured as an intimate conversation between the artist and their mother, the film weaves together narratives around intimacy, settler colonialism, matriarchy, tourism and art market, accompanied by a soundtrack of construction noise, folk music and pop songs made by the artist. As the video tries to turn Wang's paintings from low res JEPGs to livingness, we also experience an uneasy interrogation of the complex notion of motherhood and motherland, both personal and collective.

^{single channel HD video, sound,color, 10’
*Commissioned by OCAT Institute.}