In 2021, I had the honor of attending the O'Kids International Children's Art Festival held in Chongqing as a special guest, and my work was interpreted and interviewed on-site.
Y: In your work "Phantasisland(造梦城)", you depicted a huge utopian city. You also wrote a story for this work, telling the story of children living in ruins in the future world, which is full of imagination. Can you share your creative inspiration? **
Me: The source of the theme of this graduation project was the historical story of the garbage playground. At that time, our project needed to find some historical documents about children's education. I accidentally discovered this interesting history. This historical story also aroused my great interest and resonance, which started the creation of this idea.
The story of "047" was originally written from some touches in the deepest part of my heart. I have many innocent fantasies, and this story was also formed by recapture of these fantasies of mine. There are not so many complicated constraints, but it triggers the inner emotional side, and it is also the reason why the most sincere part of the work can be retained.
Y: In your work "Phantasisland(造梦城)", you describe various details very carefully: there is a fruit island that produces fruits with garbage as raw materials, and there are different waste concentration camps, showing the audience a rich fantasy world. How do you conceive the scenes in the work? What process did this work go through from the conception of the scene to the final presentation? **
Me: The work is divided into three parts. The first part is a fictional novel as mentioned before. I also used collage techniques to depict these abstract fictional pictures. When I want to return to the current city to construct a utopia in the final part, I cannot abandon the story I told before. The two are directly related, but I don’t need to restore them completely. Instead, there is a relationship of interweaving and not completely overlapping.
I was stagnant for several months during the creative process because I couldn't find a starting point to continue deepening. The biggest reason might be that I had a doubtful mentality about the result in the middle, but in the end I still chose to express the work to the extreme. I felt that I couldn't hesitate in the usual way of thinking. Based on the previous collage pictures, I needed a more concrete picture to show my utopian world logic, so I used a line drawing section to start forming my entire story logic, linking and driving each point in the front through a section expression. When the picture was conceived, I restored the entire three-dimensional world structure based on this picture. In summary, the whole process is from text collage to line drawing section pictures, and finally formed a three-dimensional creative scene.
Y: The theme of this exhibition is "Child-Friendly City", and your work also depicts a "Phantasisland(造梦城)" for children. Can you talk about how you understand the concept of "Child-Friendly City"? In your opinion, what is the inherent connection between your work and the theme of this exhibition? **
Me: "Child-friendly city" is a very good theme concept. It can cover many areas that we need to think about and pay attention to at present. From a large perspective, what do we need to give children in modern cities? What aspects do we need to think about in urban public design? Whether an ordinary social place also considers the details for children, more activities for children to participate in, etc., so that they can integrate into urban life from the heart.
From a spiritual level, children also need some education that can stimulate their inner potential. Education is not just the content in the form of books. It is in line with the development of this society. How to better integrate children into society in the future and have a good childhood memory are also topics that need to be continuously concerned. These are all areas that need to be continuously explored to constitute a "child-friendly city".