Siheyuan Co-House
co-living program10.1.20 - 11.5.20
This will probably be the most special memory from my 2020.
In July, after I learned that I had no choice but to go back to China to take remote classes in the fall, I decided to rent a siheyuan in central Beijing for a month and live with other Chinese students in US colleges like me, to have a sense of community in this uncertain time. Through friends, and friends of friends, I found 13 really cool human beings, almost all of whom I barely knew at the time.
The 36 days of living in this siheyuan were beyond anything I could have hoped for. With these new friends, I went to art shows, walked on the streets of Beijing at 2am, experienced sensory-deprivation tank, visited a psychedelic guitarist, watched sunrise outside the Forbidden City, visited a worker’s union exhibition, camped under the Great Wall, and watched the US election.
Many conversations happened in the common room from 12am to 7am -- that’s right, because I have “afternoon” classes at Princeton -- about the commonalities between mathematicians and artists, what to do with a so-called elite education, why we want or don’t want to have kids, and our thoughts about love.
We also opened the space to our friends outside the siheyuan every week. Events we hosted include: mid-autumn festival celebration, themed discussions, halloween pumpkin carving, election watch party, and a few casual gatherings. Every event was open to everyone who was interested. At certain points of our events, there could be 30 to 40 people in this little courtyard. And everyone interested was added to our “Friends of the Siheyuan” groupchat on WeChat, which has grown to almost 150 members by now. Because many people in this group met each other at our events, they now share information about art shows and film screenings in Beijing to find people to go together.
The siheyuan was only a beginning, of many beautiful experiences and relationships yet to come :)
In July, after I learned that I had no choice but to go back to China to take remote classes in the fall, I decided to rent a siheyuan in central Beijing for a month and live with other Chinese students in US colleges like me, to have a sense of community in this uncertain time. Through friends, and friends of friends, I found 13 really cool human beings, almost all of whom I barely knew at the time.
The 36 days of living in this siheyuan were beyond anything I could have hoped for. With these new friends, I went to art shows, walked on the streets of Beijing at 2am, experienced sensory-deprivation tank, visited a psychedelic guitarist, watched sunrise outside the Forbidden City, visited a worker’s union exhibition, camped under the Great Wall, and watched the US election.
Many conversations happened in the common room from 12am to 7am -- that’s right, because I have “afternoon” classes at Princeton -- about the commonalities between mathematicians and artists, what to do with a so-called elite education, why we want or don’t want to have kids, and our thoughts about love.
We also opened the space to our friends outside the siheyuan every week. Events we hosted include: mid-autumn festival celebration, themed discussions, halloween pumpkin carving, election watch party, and a few casual gatherings. Every event was open to everyone who was interested. At certain points of our events, there could be 30 to 40 people in this little courtyard. And everyone interested was added to our “Friends of the Siheyuan” groupchat on WeChat, which has grown to almost 150 members by now. Because many people in this group met each other at our events, they now share information about art shows and film screenings in Beijing to find people to go together.
The siheyuan was only a beginning, of many beautiful experiences and relationships yet to come :)
Breakfast is Here
short film2020
This short film was made during the filmmaker’s mandatory quarantine in Shanghai, after she flew from New York to take remote classes as an international student. Focusing on the quarantine workers in white PPE, the filmmaker portrays an almost sci-fi room service experience in the covid pandemic.
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When Nothing Mattered
music video
2020.8
music | Damian Rodriguez
animation | Wendi Yan
editing | Damian Rodriguez
Looking At You
2020.7
interactive web film
TouchDesigner, Blender, Unreal Engine 4, photogrammetry
Looking At You is a web experience about the artist’s inner journey with the particular loneliness augmented by the ongoing pandemic and increasing hostility between the two nations she considers home. Combining 3d modeling, experimental video, animation, projection and text, Wendi made a web “film” that chronicles the questions she’s been asking herself and the reconciliation she reached towards the end of her residency and her time quarantining alone: “how have my escapist activities intensified my loneliness? How can I stay connected with reality if I am only interacting with others through screens? What do we do if it is fundamentally impossible for humans to feel complete empathy for others?” Looking At You was created alongside nights of musings on these questions. Through this short experience, Wendi invites the audience to join her in thinking about loneliness in this isolating time, and she hopes this work could help some feel a bit less alone.
For a better experience, the artist recommends you open the project link at night on a laptop or desktop.
100
Ableton, TouchDesigner
projected onto the blinds in my airbnb
made on the 100th day of staying home
How I feel, trapped in my consciousness
MasC
2019
virtual environment created with Maya, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine 4
a modern mask shop
when self-expression is manufactured and capitalized
Illustrations
︎︎︎ projects details
Eusapia
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“No city is more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life and flee care. And to make the leap from life to death less abrupt, the inhabitants have constructed an identical copy of their city, underground...
“They say that every time they go below they find something changed in the lower Eusapia...And the living, to keep up with them, also want to do everything that the hooded brothers tell them about the novelties of the dead. So the Eusapia of the living has taken to copying its underground copy.
“They say that...actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead.”
“They say that every time they go below they find something changed in the lower Eusapia...And the living, to keep up with them, also want to do everything that the hooded brothers tell them about the novelties of the dead. So the Eusapia of the living has taken to copying its underground copy.
“They say that...actually it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead.”
--- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Alternative Book Covers
2018-2019
Architecture of the Apocalypse
2020.7
Gallery for Moses
2019.4
duration: 1 mo
thesis: extreme views of falling and power exchange
Spatial Relationship Study
2019.2-3
duration: 1.5 mo
thesis: dualities in unity
The model is mainly formed through two triangular volumes that are connected by lines. Similar elements (2 “L” shaped planes in different sizes, as well as a hinged rectangle with windows) mirror each other diagonally across the front and the back.
I used two sets of axes that are 45 degree apart, and employed the two thin, straight lines from the given elevation as two guiding lines of the model, forming an “x” at the center of the plan. The front side follows the elevation plan, with most of the rectangles being planes turned by 45 degrees to the same direction. Looking from the top, the turned plans become lines, while originally hidden “ribbons” reveal themselves as they run from bottom to top, or top to bottom, connecting the two major triangular volumes.
In addition, I sought to develop my architectural language by forming volumes with minimal planes that connect with each other at corner points, and I explored the hinges in particular.
The model presents different levels of solidity and opennessat different angles or from different sides.
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Soundspace
2018.7
duration: 1.5 wk
site: under the highline,
w. 22nd street at 10th avenue, south side of the street
thesis:
a parallel experience with what’s above the High Line
a contrasting texture with the structure of the High Line
dark v.s. bright
heavy v.s. light
industrial v.s. organic
around each opening are recordings taken from above the highline
each sound/recording drifts in and out of the visitor’s ears as the visitor move in and out of th
e circular openings
in the middle of an opening, the visitor hear the symphony of all sounds, just as one hears on top of the highline
Mitla in Chaos
2020.2
weaving
Arquetopia Residency
Oaxaca, Mexico
The Drifting World
2018.1In exploration of the relationship between the individual and the collective, this experimental video juxtaposes zoomed-in visual spaces of bubbles, cooked rice and melting wax, with sounds gathered from public urban settings like in the trains, subways, and on the roads.
link to video
Floating
2017These paintings, done in the same summer, collectively reflect my feeling for the world: individuals floating about in the vast wave of the collective.
Your Half Fortunes
2017resin, transparent vellum
I asked students, faculty and staff of my high school to write down a fortune for themselves. When they came to the show, they had to flip over numerous resin hemispheres on which texts were suspended until they found their own fortune. Visitors to the show could also write down their fortunes on the cards I had prepared, and stick them around the pedestal.
Many of the hundred fortunes mentioned the words “love” and “happy” - reminders to take better care of themselves. After reading each fortune over and over, one classmate whom I barely knew personally told me she had written an anonymous note for another school project that I shared online, with the words, “I have a constant fear that I am not enough.” At this exhibition, she wrote a card saying, “you are always enough.”
This work enabled me to connect with my community. I felt fortunate to help convey the participants’ tender and honest sentiments with relative simplicity and emotional depth and see how we all share similar hopes and fears.
Life
Life Soup
2016performance at RISD
I made paper pulp “life soup” for my audience. Each “customer” could pick up to two life flavors from my menu. I shredded slips of paper with images corresponding to the “flavors” and placed them into a blender with water. Customers could tear away any parts of the self-guidance books on topics including marriage, career, or faith as their add-on ingredient. The paper would deform in the swirling warm water into paper pulp. Customers could then pick a poem from a 500-page collection as their “topping.” Finally, they would “pay” me with life tips they wrote anonymously.
The final product of Life Soup was, of course, not edible. But it was the process of each person making choices that mattered more: what life ‘flavor’ to pick, what issues seemed pertinent, what literary language resonated, etc. It was also interesting to be the artist and observe the process. I watched “happy” quickly run out, and “wealthy” almost remain in full stock. Most of the life tips were about staying true to oneself.
It was also interesting to be the artist and observe the process: “happy” quickly ran out; most of the life tips were about staying true to oneself.
[Paper]
Neuroscience informs design, now what? Towards an awe-inspiring spatial design
published in
Conscious Cities Anthology 2019:
Science-Informed Architecture and Urbanism
Awe-inspiring spatial design
-- with examples from art and architecture
visual supplement to the research
The Architecture of Awe
independent research at UPenn’s Positive Psychology Center, with guidance from David Yaden1
The Self-less Heaven and Hell
-- Comparing the no-self experiences
in Depersonalization Disorder and Buddhist meditative practices
2020.12
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Lobotomy: A Successful Collective Self-Deception
2020.10
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The Silence that Did Not Let Others In
John Cage, Susan Sontag, encoding/decoding theory
2019.5
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4
Transferred Nostalgia of the Kowloon Walled City
globalization, urban memory
2019.3
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Can Abstract Art Be Propaganda?
Abstract Expressionism, Cold War
2017.5
Academic Writing
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Puzzles
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Let’s Care About Starving Artists
[pdf] [solution]Princeton Puzzle Hunt 2019
Meta 2
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Photo Album
[pdf with solution]3
Calligraphic Cures
[pdf]Phillips Exeter Academy Puzzle Hunt 2017
Meta 5
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James Turrell - 呼吸光
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高中成天翘课的诺贝尔奖得主跟我说，要尽可能多地冒险
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James Turrell - 呼吸光
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Mucha x Banksy - 要把作品搞到货币上，也要格格不入地被历史垂青
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三周室内设计课--我的作品，以及“面对不完美”
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JR - 用艺术改变世界吧！
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Wanda Koop - 纽约大街上全是这个不知名的艺术家
Blog Articles
on contemporary art, design education, and unconventional career paths
2018
Drifting
2017This was an essay I submitted for my creative nonfiction class.
I wrote several sections that could be read in any order. Topics of the sections ranged from mobile game, contemporary art, to theoretical physics and buddhism.
The sections are all about similar concepts around “drifting” and use similar languages about heaviness v. lightness.
Odi et Amo
2017
Santa Hats
2018
Two friends and I put up 70 santa hats around Princeton campus, the last night before winter break started.
Pop-up Installation
2017.11
My friends and I collected cardboard boxes from the school’s mailroom, and made two half-arches in the main academy building.