My project looks at the notion of “mutated species” as an exiled figure to challenge repressed political, cultural and ethnic issues during the Cultural Revolution, as well as current discussions on rural/urban divide, indigeneity, tourism, institutional and familial structures in contemporary China. Predicated on contemporary art practices, this project will examine the figure of exile in Hubei province, drawing on an interdisciplinary approach that embraces both scientific and anecdotal accounts, which in turn transform the figure into a figure of multitude across time and space. Through examining the exiled figure, I want to draw attention to non-binary thinking on space, identity, colonisation and institutions in non-Western contexts.
With a focus on moving-image and sound, as well as experiments in architectural mapping and storytelling and theatrical techniques, the research aims to re-imagine the figure’s historical existence both in the region and in remote Chinese borderlands. It wants to speculate the figure’s social organisation and interactions both within and with the outside world then and now.
