Vanilla Chi, 𖦹 Currently→ 𓁺*MFA*Graphic Design (2027), Yale School of Art, New Haven, US; →♰ *Researching* Anthropology, Religon, Ritual, Semiology, and Transcendental Beyond etc,…; → 𓃈*Self-Publishing* Pearl Slug Studio (2019-present), New York, Shanghai; → *Editor* Raging Magazine(2019-present); → ♪ *Broadcasting* Illustration Roundtable (2020-2024); → 𓆙*Practice* Ceramic @serpentskirt_97; Writing; Textile; → 𖣘 *Illustrator* The New York Times/The New Yorker/ Bloomberg/WIRED/Farfetch/VICE It’s Nice That/Olympics/Coca-Cola/Aritzia/WeTransfer/MOLD magazine…(It’s my past) →◌*BFA*Illustration (2017-2021), School of Visual Arts, New York.
Interview/writing/editing by Vanilla Chi
03/26/2023
In the beginning of the movie A torinói ló (The Horse of Turin), which tells the story of a day in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche and one of his horses, Nietzsche stops in front of door number six of the Hotel Via Carlo Alport and is attracted to a stubborn, striking horse. No matter how much the coachman shouted and whipped the horse, it remained motionless. Nietzsche rushed into the crowd, rushed to the horse, threw his arms around the horse's neck, and wept bitterly.
“Back at the hotel, Nietzsche lay quietly and motionless on the sofa for two days. He then whispered a few words. What followed was ten years of Nietzsche's psychotic and deranged life, cared for by his sister and mother. Who knows what happened in Turin, on that horse, in Nietzsche's heart.”
***
In 2017, Mardon came to Pasadena, Los Angeles County, to report for school and saw the 'Horses Through Horses' sign on the Panhandle Highway. It was more than a year later that he saw horses for the first time - a team of slow horses, led across the road by a head horse rider.
“It was slow, but John Lennon clearly knew exactly where to go;
Paul McCartney took a shit in the middle of the road.”
Written/Edited by Vanilla Chi
01/26/2023
When facing history, I have too many fantasies that are detached from reality, and even an inexplicable sense of mission. However, it is only after really intervening that I can realize that I am involved in a very insignificant cut, limited in what I can do, and that the big world and the small environment push time forward, unemotionally and neutrally.
--Introduction
At the beginning of December, 2022, by chance, I began working full-time at Eastern Bookstore, an old-school bookstore in New York City. The bookstore is located in Chinatown, a bustling Chinese neighborhood in Manhattan, New York. Founded in 1976 by the late Chinese-American Liu Zhenyi, the bookstore has a history of 47 years, and operates in an area of about 600 square meters, making it the largest comprehensive Chinese bookstore for Chinese people in North America.
Through interviews, research, and fieldwork.
02/26/2023
The inter-media artist Pan Duruoheng (hereinafter referred to as Pan Du) conducted about 200 questionnaires and in-depth interviews with 10 participants to eventually create a fictional world to discuss the issue of body shaming in a humorous and ironic approach.
"Body shaming" is a problem faced by almost everyone in modern society, not only by people but also animals. For example, while overweight girls are not popular, fat cats are considered cute; on the other hand, some cats are overweight and forced to go on a diet.
"●&I Wonderland" is not only an attempt to present "body image anxiety," but also a work that challenges the definition of "monster" and discourses on prejudice and understanding.
This article is adapted from a video installation and a live exhibition. In the exhibition, 46 pieces of acrylic cardboard (10 cm x 10 cm) are arranged on a display case and a huge flag (300 cm x 400 cm) hangs from the ceiling, while an animation (Duration: 2' 40'') is shown on the screen.
04/2024
Summer’s Over，Seaside Town
Afterwords
In 2019, my grandfather passed away.
My family concealed the truth with clumsy lies for four months. ‘ Your grandfather passed away.’ I wasn’t informed by my mom until a few days after I returned to China from New York for summer break. The dead have gone, while the living to live. It’s cruel.
I felt guilty and thought I didn’t deserve to laugh or go out but stay at home with grief and memories. In spite of that, life still continued as planned. I was going to attend my friend’s graduation exhibition in Guangzhou, and in a few days I would prepare for my first book fair in Beijing. I suddenly didn’t know how to deal with my family in Beijing. How should I behave in front of them? They must be more miserable than me. Should I remain silent? What on earth is death?
Upon arriving in Beijing, I didn’t visit my grandmother even after a week. I didn’t want to and dare not see her being alone. With Grandfather gone, what about the plants she grew? What was she supposed to do without that chubby old man with black frame glasses, reading the newspaper at the table through a magnifying glass?
Before I physically experience the illness and death of my family, my perception of ‘death’ was detached and nihilistic philosophy from an outsider’s view. My grandfather’s death in 2019, followed by my father’s serious illness, forced me contradictorily rethink about death. The privileges I once took for granted were shattered. No matter where I sought refuge, whether in my bed or through my art, these experiences could no longer be sealed. I could no longer suffer alone, nor did I have the privilege to suffer only for myself.
***
Back to the theme home-coming. Although this work is a creation around the home-coming topic, what I’ve been telling is a story about home-leaving: a tale intertwined with growth, death, family and urban transformations. Shenzhen is a city that swiftly demolishes the old to make way for the new. Each time I return, familiar places and objects either adopt an entirely new appearance or vanish altogether. I don’t know if I’m home-coming or home-leaving at the moment I come back.
I wandered aimlessly through the neighborhood where I grew up; I have a meal in the restaurant I often visit, and go to the arcade to play music games I liked in middle school. Most of the time I am alone, and occasionally I hang out with my long-lost friends.
I never thought that summer would be different until 2019. Exhausted from idle days spent smoking at the entrance of the newly opened shopping mall downstairs, I impulsively changed my flight to return to New York earlier, without hesitation. I assumed that the next summer would still come as usual, but for me, I decided not to come back ever again. This was the first time that I made the decision to escape. Then, I didn't expect the following summer to be like this, and how precious the summer of 2019 is. I can’t recall any of ceremonial scenes or time. The memories of those trees, flowers, boats and waves keep reminding me, how hard it is to recreate that “boring” summer. I regret never have a proper farewell as it passed away forever.
The last time I returned to Shenzhen in 2021, my mom suddenly suggested that we visit the home we lived in twenty years ago. That home was situated in an old industrial park in Shenzhen and always appeared in my dreams alongside the monsters from the Tokusatsu TV Show I watched as a kid. The house, where I spent my kindergarten days, had been rented out and turned into a shared space with two double bed frames in the living room. I could still see the ghostly old dining room table where I used to keep the loach I caught in the park and cared for months. I could remember where my parents' bed used to be, the graffiti on the wall, and the plants on the balcony. I often wonder if these memories are accurate, but I can't confirm them; the answers seem to drift away into eternity.
I have procrastinated for two years after I finished the beginning. It’s still too heavy for me. I am afraid that I would ruin it. I am afraid that once it is finished, something would be changed forever and would never be the same again. I’m even more afraid that once it’s finished, I would reconcile with myself and my family. I don’t want reconciliation. I want to always remember this guilt, regret, unspoken hints and belated pain forever. I drag myself back to these scenes eternally and intermittently. Let my rootless duckweed-like life land on the ground and be free.
***
Finale
from <Glimpses>,
One of my favorite films is 'Yi Yi’ ( 2000 ), directed by Taiwanese director Edward Yang, which was also his last film before he passed away shortly after. The movie begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral.
The young boy named Yang-Yang deeply captivated me. He is withdrawn and reticent, while likes to capture the backs of people’s heads with his beloved film camera, this is his approach of observing and documenting. At the end of the movie, Yang-Yang stands in front of his grandmother’s shrine and confesses why he does it, he says, “ I’m going to tell people what they don’t know, and show them what they can’t see.”
I have watched this movie several times in independent theaters, and each time, I have been in tears during this reading. The experience of watching, the way of seeing, are always pounding me, leaves a long lasting echo on me.
I don’t do comics often, I’m not a good fictional storyteller. The three comics in this collection were created between 2020 to 2022, a relatively short period in my creative path. Comics are not a major focus of my studies or works, yet they encapsulate significant experiences in the course of my life. Starting with a narrative deconstructing memories of “Home-Leaving”, I glimpse death, the “rituals of passage and realizations”; my vibration of empathy with a writer spanning time and space; and my introspective moments of self-pitying gaze.
I don’t expect readers to fully grasp the meaning. Comics are characterized by divided frames, by faintly discernible subplots. The narrative fragments are not continuous, but reproduces like a broken mirrors, hard to tell if it’s real or not. After completing the work, akin to shedding my tears into the sea. I let go of my fixation on how others interpret the story’s continuation.
Art for me is a form of performance, a ritual about life. The process of creation is akin to a birthing ritual, involving the transfer of one's soul in equal measure. Only then can a work possess vitality and honesty even after its creator's passing. I cherish the transcendental moments of ‘forgetfulness and ecstasy', a metaphysical equivalent exchange that could be savored and contemplated in our disenchantment modern world. Georg Hegal says, ‘Now, the life of Spirit is not that life which is frightened of death, and spares itself destruction, but that life which assumes death and lives with it. Spirit attains its truth only by finding itself in absolute dismemberment.’
The deep pain, the resurfacing of memories, and the moments of hesitation to set aside my pencil while creating these comics were manifestations of a fear of confronting death, even if symbolically through performance.
After flowing through this one, I rest and breath. In the midst of a familiar calling, I am ready for next death.
***
“Granny, I'm sorry, it's not that I don't like to talk to you, it's just that I feel like you must know everything I can tell you. Otherwise, you wouldn't have told me to "do as I'm told" every time. "Like when they said you were gone, you didn't tell me where you went. So, I figured it had to be somewhere we both knew.
Grandma, there's so much I don't know. Do you know what I want to do in the future? I'm going to tell people what they don't know and show them what they can't see. I think that must be fun every day. Maybe one day I'll find out exactly where you've been. By then, can I tell everyone and get them to come and see you together? Grandma, I miss you so much Especially when I see that little cousin who doesn't have a name yet, I think of how you always told me 'You're getting old. I would love to tell him ...... I'm old too."