As an illustrator, I use symbols and signs-married from both Eastern and Western cultures-to produce work that visually articulates a narrative. Coming from China, I keep thinking about the ideology and the social forms of my country, and thus my work has evolved in a way that is more than a mere expression of myself, but has expanded to a platform on which to raise questions. I am also interested in the possibility of creating empathy from the audience with the issues and stories that are unique to my cultural background.

The idea of my thesis work is based on the topic of power and castration, which comes from a Chinese novel called ‘Testicles and Penises Under the Sky’ by Feng Tang.

I am referring in this work to a Chinese folding screen format to carry out my concept. On the front side, there will be an illustration based on my interpretation of the content of the novel. Meanwhile, on the backside, I am illustrating my own sense of the meanings of the story and its correspondence to the current political situation in modern China, to illustrate the concepts I have developed around the condition of political and ideological self-castration/being-castrated.

I wanted to create a series of illustrations that bring spectators to the center of the game of power in the palace of the emperor, and to contemplate the story for the story itself. Yet at the same time, I hope that these illustrations can also serve as a political allegory that enables the observer to question the systems they themselves were brought up in, the ways of thinking they were taught, and to suggest the ways in which we are all ‘eunuchs’ to political systems of power.