Xiaomei and the Selfiction Series

From “I become different women” to “different women are all called Xiaomei,” this body of work examines how popular media constructs, narrates and consumes female identities.

“Selfiction” combines the ideas of the selfie, self-representation and fictional narrative. Through role-play, I work simultaneously as researcher, director and performer, re-enacting female archetypes drawn from Chinese mass media—particularly legal and crime programmes, talent shows, sports coverage and reality television. These women often have complex, controversial or tragic lives, yet their experiences are reorganised into emotionally charged stories designed to be watched, judged, sympathised with and morally interpreted.

In Flying Dance, Big Dream Show and Ping Pong Stream, I use my own body to enter these mediated lives. Flying Dance brings together a Chinese television crime story, the early internet novel The First Intimate Contact, footage from The Sims and my own performance to explore online intimacy, gender and the unstable boundary between documentary and fiction. Big Dream Show examines how television transforms personal hardship into inspirational entertainment, while Ping Pong Stream places an individual woman’s story within the wider narratives of competitive sport, national pride and political history. Across these works, real events, television archives, online fiction, video games and performed scenes are reconstructed into hybrid narratives that move between self-portraiture, documentary, re-enactment and fiction. The “self” is not presented as a stable identity, but becomes a method for entering other people’s stories and testing how media narratives are produced.

The Xiaomei series extends this practice into the age of short-video platforms and algorithmic storytelling. In Chinese online recaps of films and television dramas, female protagonists with entirely different identities and histories are frequently given the generic name “Xiaomei.” Xiaomei is therefore not a specific person, but a simplified media heroine: an interchangeable narrative position that can be repeatedly filled, circulated and replaced. Although the name sounds familiar and intimate, it erases individual differences and reduces complex lives to plots that can be quickly understood and consumed.

In Unbound Zine: Xiaomei Going Overseas, I appropriate this generic character once again, allowing Xiaomei to travel through East and Southeast Asian zine cultures, queer-feminist self-publishing, diasporic experience and cross-border migration. Here, she is no longer simply the heroine whose story is narrated by someone else. She gradually becomes a narrator, a carrier of stories and a figure connecting different communities.

Moving from the exaggerated “suffering women” of the television era to the generic Xiaomei of short-video culture, these works trace how women’s experiences are repeatedly rewritten by changing media systems. At the same time, through performance, fiction and self-publishing, the series explores how these appropriated identities might be reclaimed—and how women might regain the ability to tell their own stories.

Duration: 30 mins

Trailer:

Watch her. She is Xiaomei (Little Beauty). Call me Xiaomei. We are unbound zines. Small. Fragile. Fleeting. No ISBNs — that’s how they escape the systems that cage stories. In Asia, queer and women’s zines exist like nowhere else. Their formats dance between extremes — tiny pocket booklets that whisper secrets, oversized sheets that demand attention; bindings improvised with thread and hope, stitched by hand, or left brazenly unbound; materials experimental and alive. They inherit the lineage of woodblock prints and folk art, transforming traditional craft into radical publishing that burns bright.

This year, they surfaced. Breathing spaces into being! Then silence. No ISBNs, no voice. Censorship’s weight pressed them back into shadow. Overseas — Is this the only horizon left? What will we, those unbound zines, encounter drifting beyond the borders?

Crew:

Director: Oyester
Creative Producer: Burong Zeng Creative team members:

• Associate Director: Shuwen Tan
• Screenwriters: Oyester, Burong Zeng
• DOP: Holli Xue
• Art Direction: Oyester
• Post-Production Visual Effects & Editing: Holli Xue, Oyester
• Animation: Li Meng
• Original Music Composition & Sound Post-Production: Xuanni He
• Makeup & Styling: Human
• Costume Design: Oyester, Yushan, Xiaofu
• On-site Assistant Producers: Yushan, Xiaofu
• Drone: Yiqing Chen
• Translation: Burong Zeng
• Cast:
  • Funa Ye (multiple characters)
  • Five Xiaomei: Shuwen Tan, Human Hu, Anqi Fan, Sam Reynolds, Gene Lee
  • Group scenes: Funa Ye, Yufang Fu, Ling Zhang, Zhuoran Li, Man Yun Ku, Cheng Lee, Human, Anqi Fan, Sam Reynolds, Gene Lee, Ya Shu, Xiaofu Jiang, Yanchen Guo, Yushan Li, Jiaye Wang, Jiayu Wang, Tia Yooon, Burong Zeng, Martin Saps

Research Supporters:

Organizations & Archives: Asia Art Archive Grrrl Zine Library, Gwobean, Fuyin.INFO, Library Mothership, MondayOFF, The Pidgin Library, ZINE COOP

Space Support:  Asia Art Archive, Grrrl Zine Library, Gwobean, Hong Kong, KL Zine Etc., Kuala Lumpur, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, ZINE YO! FEST, Hong Kong

Individuals:
Dr Hongwei Bao, Sam Yi Yao Chao, Lilin, Krystie Ng, Beatrix Pang, Sickgirl

Supported by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant

Neo-folk art diagram 民间艺术图谱

Mixed media collage on canvas, 143cm x111cm, 2024

Neo-Folk Matrix

Continuing from the foundation of Neo-Folk Matrix, the series further delves into the intricate relationship between textiles and the concept of matriarchy. Textiles, especially handcrafted ones, are not merely artistic mediums but represent the threads of connection between generations, embodying the transmission of knowledge, culture, and personal memories. In many matrilineal societies, the act of weaving and textile creation is more than a craft—it is a form of storytelling, a way to encode the values, history, and spirit of a community.

In our collaboration, my mother and I engage in a dialogue that transcends the traditional boundaries of artistic creation. Our work together on this series is not just a fusion of ideas but a reimagining of how matriarchal societies function—through shared experience, mutual respect, and the continuous flow of wisdom from one generation to the next. This process is reflected in the very fabric of our tapestries, where each piece is a culmination of both planned and spontaneous actions, mirroring the fluidity and adaptability inherent in matrilineal structures.

The improvisational nature of our work challenges my usual methodical approach to art. It pushes me to embrace uncertainty and to allow the process to unfold naturally, much like the way knowledge and traditions are passed down in matrilineal societies—not through rigid instruction but through lived experience and the subtle guidance of maternal figures. This approach has brought a new depth to my understanding of creation, where the final work is not just a product of my hands but a collaborative effort that honors the contributions of my mother and the lineage of women before her.

As we navigate the interplay between tradition and modernity, the series also reflects on the broader implications of matriarchy in contemporary society. It challenges the viewer to reconsider the roles of women, not just as caretakers or passive recipients of culture, but as active participants in the shaping of history and the future. Through the use of textiles—a traditionally feminine medium—we reclaim and elevate these practices to a new level, demonstrating their relevance and power in today’s world.

The Neo-Folk Matrix series, in its essence, is a celebration of matriarchal values, where the emphasis is placed on nurturing, continuity, and the collective strength of women. It is a testament to the resilience of these values, even in the face of modern challenges. By weaving together personal narratives, cultural symbols, and the profound influence of my mother, this series offers a unique perspective on the enduring power of matrilineal heritage and its relevance in both art and life.

China Neo-folk art 中国民间艺术图谱

Mixed media collage on canvas

143cm x111cm, 2024

Bore Butterfly 褴褛:蝴蝶

Indigo – dyed fabric, hand and machine embroidery, digital print

157cm x230cm, 2025

Smart Governance 褴褛:织理

Indigo – dyed fabric, hand and machine embroidery, digital print

143cm*193cm, 2025

The Boro series brings together indigo dyeing, batik, digital printing, hand embroidery and machine embroidery. Traditional patterns are juxtaposed with AI-generated imagery, while layers of fabric, stitching and irregular repair preserve the physical traces of labour and time. Moving between the butterfly as an ancestral and ecological symbol and “weaving logic” as a metaphor for technological governance, the works explore how vernacular craft might be reinterpreted in the digital age. Rather than allowing machines to replace the hand, the series creates a dialogue between embodied knowledge and algorithmic systems, irregularity and precision, cultural memory and technological generation.

Moon Palace Fairies 月宫姐妹

Mixed media collage on fabrics 130x178cm, 2023

Exhibitionist: The Smart Gallery

Installation & live event, C5cnm space, Beijing, 2021

From ancient times to the present, hair has carried secret, rich meaning. “Hairstyle” can be expressed as a form of resistance of individuals to mainstream values, a “movable temporary device”, and a gesture and action that is better than a speech. In subcultural studies, playing with hair (making art) can also be seen as a form of shame, a sign of self-exile, and a symbol of tension between the dominant and subordinate groups.

The purpose of Exhibitionist Series is to break the boundaries of “daily display” and “art exhibition”, and to reduce the distance between the public and contemporary art. In our current hyper-connected society, people’s desire to “display” is everywhere- selfies, Insagram, Wechat, and in its most extreme form, live stream. As a global online culture with a fundamental desire to expose and to peep, Live Streams occupy a space where visual expression and textual feedback are instantly accessible. This live space parasitizes online spaces and becomes a way of displaying and self-expression for the new generation.

Exhibitionist: JinFeng Roller Skating Club

Installation &live evnet, Tank Shanghai, 2021

JOURNEYING WITH THE SMARTS

Event/ Documentary, Shanghai, 2022

One-day tour in Shanghai/ 2023. 2

Mastr

Mastr, You Are Marvelous!

Master, You Are Marvelous! is a performative video work that investigates the paradoxical relationship between artistic labor, mechanical labor, and the cultural figure of the “master.” Developed as part of my long-term engagement with the Sha Ma Te (SMART) community of rural migrant youth in China, the work stages an encounter between marginalized subcultural subjects and the so-called “masters” of the art world.

In collaboration with artist Wang Qingsong and local artisans in Jingdezhen, the film depicts a fictional scenario in which a “Master” and a group of flamboyantly styled Sha Ma Te youths arrive in a town known for its art. They visit established artists and artisans—figures who embody institutional prestige and official recognition. In the process, admiration, parody, and absurd intimacy blur the lines between subcultural “outsiders” and cultural elites.

This work critically examines the body politics of migrant labor. The Smart subculture originated among young factory workers on the urban peripheries, whose self-styling practices transformed the anonymity of mechanical labor into a carnivalesque assertion of presence. By placing these figures into dialogue with art-world “masters,” Mastr, You Are Marvelous! questions the mechanisms through which artistic labor is valorized, celebrated, and fetishized, while the material conditions of working-class laborers remain invisible or dismissed.

The project also plays on the multiple meanings of the word “Master.” In Chinese cultural discourse, it is both an honorific title for officially sanctioned artists and artisans, and a marker of elitism, authority, and intellectual hierarchy. In socialist rhetoric, “future masters” described the collective aspirations of children as the heirs of society. In global English, “master” also recalls the histories of domination, servitude, and property. By collapsing these meanings, the work destabilizes the boundaries between “high” and “low,” “elite” and “grassroots,” and asks who can claim mastery in the cultural field.

Through absurdist performance and visual parody, Mastr, You Are Marvelous! reveals the contradictions of how artistic labor is framed: at once exalted and abstracted, while other forms of labor—mechanical, affective, migrant—remain undervalued. It suggests that the celebration of the “Master” in art is itself a labor performance, one that masks systemic inequalities and exposes the precarious condition of cultural workers in both the factory and the gallery.

In the context of InVisible Culture’s issue on “(Un)Doing Labor,” this work proposes to see both Smart youth and young artisans as “Mastrs”—a deliberately misspelled identity that reclaims agency through irony. To be your own “Mastr” is to refuse the hierarchies of mastery and to reinvent the value of labor as collective creativity, absurd resistance, and critical play.

The MastrTM Concept China Store displayed more than ten ceramic pieces created in Jing- dezhen. In these works, refitted motorcycles—a recurring symbol of freedom, speed, and es- cape for Shamate youth—were painstakingly translated into the medium of elite porcelain.

 Installation view of MASTR‘s CONCEPT STORE at Voyage UCCA Lab, Shanghai, 2021

Goddess Legends

The Goddess Legends series brings together thirteen distinctive female figures from art history within a composition inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Each character is performed by Ye Funa and constructed through makeup, costume, digital effects, and post-production. Combining references from Chinese and Western visual culture with parody and theatrical role-play, the work takes the form of a three-channel video installation.

By embodying women from different historical periods, Ye places them within a shared time and space, creating unexpected connections between their identities, personalities, and narratives. Through reenacting and reimagining their stories, she explores the latent power carried by these iconic figures. The fictional reconstruction of history becomes a way to examine the shifting politics of representation, gender, authority, and collective memory.

PRACTICE 13 – AFTER DINNER PARTY 习作13 后晚宴 

PRACTICE 13 – AFTER DINNER PARTY 习作13 后晚宴/3 Channel Video/ Color/ 120 min/2015

The Supper of Goddess 女神的晚宴/ C-print／51.7 x 150 cm/2015

Installation view: Future Formula: The Second CAFAM Future Exhibition, CAFA Art Museum and 798 Art Factory, Beijing, 2015. Featuring Ye Funa’s Study 13: Post-Banquet.

Arty bitches

Beauty Foot

C-print on acrylic/ 80X56cm／2015

Madonna Yelia, 
Archival inkjet print and acrylic standee, 79.79 × 125 cm, 2015.

Dream Mona Lisa, 2015
Video displayed on a digital photo frame, 49.7 × 88.48 cm.

Installation view: Arty Bitches, presented by RAINRAIN Gallery at Art Central Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 14–16 March 2015.

Installation view of Liang Ban and Ye Funa: Self-Created Universe, Klein Sun Gallery, New York, 12 January–25 February 2017. Curated by Beili Wang.

WATER

Video/ Photography

This work is in collaboration with Celine. Percent by ELLE China magazine.  Inspire by the work  “What the Water gave me” by Frida Kahlo.

Commissioned by L’Officiel Art China

Commissioned by L’Officiel Art China, Ye Funa created a series of celebrity portraits featuring actress Chen Ran as her muse. Drawing on three Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the artist invited Chen to recreate the figures’ poses and appearances. Through the appropriation of classical art, the works blur distinctions between identity, historical period, and visual style, while questioning collective aesthetics and memory shaped by public opinion and mass media.

Eat it

2’35”

Video

produced by White factory& Ifashion.

EAT IT is a fashion film created by Ye Funa in collaboration with Chinese fashion designer Liu Qingyang for CHICTOPIA’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection. Two models wearing food-print dresses mirror one another through their expressions, hairstyles, and movements. Set within an artificial “second nature” composed of synthetic landscapes, food imagery, and digital collage, the film playfully challenges conventional visions of beauty, nature, and utopia.

http://drcorona.online/

Dr.Corona Online is an interactive online-\work. Dr.Corona refers to the popular column Dr.Co Mailbox in The Family Doctor, a highly subscribed magazine since the last century in China. Dr.Co is a column run by top experts and professors from various hospitals across China. Not long ago, The Family Doctor would receive thousands of letters from fans every month. Columnists’ collective professional medical knowledge then is characterized by a single virtual figure, Dr.Co, who responds and diagnoses readers physical and mental conditions described in their letters. Within the Q&A section of this column, an enormous amount of obscure problems came into light. Some are related to conditions socially shameful or embarrassing. So Dr.Co became the popular icon and a spiritual support for a fascinating pool of storytellers.

Dr.Corona alludes to the term ‘coronavirus’. However, Dr.Corona is not a virus, nor a real human being; it is an artificial-intelligence-doctor, answering and solving the problems that may have caused by the coronavirus. Its corpus comes from the headlines on the internet, the discussions and tweets on social media, as well as the widely spread motivational quotes, a.k.a. the ‘chicken soup quotes’. Would like to be diagnosed by Dr.Corona? ‘Patients’ will receive a sort of a Prozac, in the way of compassionate drug use, which is not necessarily accurate to the patients’ symptoms. By asking questions on the project page, users will get a prescription that generated by this AI doctor. Users may also want to share the prescription on their social media in order to get a second opinion, which is always crucial.

This work is co-commissioned by Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Art Center Nabi (Seoul) and Rhizome of the New Museum (New York).

《柯大夫在线》是一件网络互动作品。“柯大夫”的名字来源于中国上世纪订阅量极高的健康杂志《家庭医生》，“柯大夫信箱”是其中备受欢迎的专栏。“柯大夫”团队由全国各大医院的顶尖专家、教授组成，杂志社每个月都会收到上万封热情读者的来信。虚拟人物“柯大夫”在栏目中用专业的医学知识解答读者身心方面的疑难杂症，其中大量隐秘且难以在现实中启齿的疑问构成了一部当代人精神生活的故事会。

柯大夫的英文发音（Dr.Corona）与新型冠状病毒（coronavirus）读音相近，但它既不是病毒，也非真人，而是一位人工智能医生，为当下新型冠状病毒所造成的疑问和困惑排忧解难。它的语料来源于互联网上的新闻，社交媒体上的讨论和广为流传的网络“心灵鸡汤”。事实上，它未必能给提问患者的症候带来准确的解决方案，更多是作为“同情用药”的一副百忧解。在网站页面提问便可以获得柯大夫开具的“处方”，在听取柯大夫意见的同时，也可以把疑问和答案分享给朋友，获取至关重要的第二医疗建议（second opinion）。

该作品由新时线媒体艺术中心（上海）、那比艺术中心（首尔）、新美术馆Rhizome（纽约）联合委约创作.

Programming: Vytas Jankauskas

Web design: Beio

Project Consultant: BI Xin

Programming Consultant: Claire Glanois

I am the fairest one of all – just check my phone: MY Magic Mirror

“Everyone is an artist” – what was an empty encouragement has become the reality of contemporary experience. Art is boundless, timeless. And how does one define beauty?They code the simplest form.

Meitu XiuXiu or MeituPic, a photo editing software for the phone, makes you beautiful. Your best self, etched in code across a black screen. Meitu has unlocked the algorithm, programming beauty, commoditizing it – defining the aesthetics of our time. It has become the self-optimizing palette – blur, enhance, warp me. The Magic Mirror.

The idea of “self” is a construct – through countless encounters and filters of reality, we learn to understand the “self” in us. The self in the self-timer is transformed into self-satisfaction, instantly, and then almost a feeling of self-awareness – um – I am beautiful. Meitu’s launching punchline: MEET YOUR BETTER SELF. Instantly! Amazingly! We become our better selves.

But is the picture still you? YOU. The person in the image goes through and beyond, to the cloud. You exist in the mobile photo album and in the cloud that is a set of algorithms designed to keep you confined, defined – to keep you BEAUTIFUL.

• Beauty everywhere – an abuse?
• Could jokes beat democracy?
• A showcase: the self
• My body grows hair
• Sounds of mosquitos
• My sneakers are stuffed in the trunk

——selected text form lecture performance “You are in the desert of the Real, But I am in Beautiful”

Fan Filters , UV Print on Acrylicboard，180cmx70cm，2018

Filter “Exhibitionist”,  build in App with installation，show with TV and phone & other equipment, 2018

Selfie Mirror／Mirror/60x80cm each/2019

Beauty Mask, Acrylics &lights, 100cmx70cm, 2018

Leopard print Mask, carpet，120从mx120cm, 2018

Beauty Plus Save the Real World,  Wall paper,  Inject Prin, size variable, 2018

Installation  view

Installation view at Chinternet Ugly at CFCCA 2019. photo by Michael Pollard

Installation view at Influence at hook gallery 2019.“True Me”，798 Factory，Beijing /Photo Courtesy of OMA, 2018

Performance at Schwobhaus， Bern，2018， photo by Shen Peiyu

2019 “It was a Dream of a Trip” Shanghai University, Shanghai

“You Live in The Desert of the Real, But I Live in Beauty” , Frame Talk 4 , Gallery Weekend Beijing, UCCA, 2020.

Stage shot of “PeeP Stream- My Only Drawback is the Pefection”, Photo by Ye Funa& Gallery Weekend Beijing; Place: UCCA lab;

“Beauty Angel” MondayOFF Issue#2 Performance + talk, X museum.

Curated Nails is an experimental curatorial project initiated by artist Ye Funa in 2014. It transforms fingernails, toenails, and the surrounding areas of the body into miniature exhibition spaces, inviting people from both within and beyond the art world to develop exhibitions at the scale of the nail.

Through painting, sculpture, collage, engraving, digital printing, 3D printing, QR codes, and virtual media, the project challenges the boundaries between nail decoration, bodily display, and contemporary art. Here, an exhibition is no longer confined to a gallery: it can be worn, touched, carried, and circulated through everyday life.

  ≈

What happens to curatorial practice when an exhibition space is reduced to the size of a nail?

Through an open call, Curated Nails invited participants of different ages, genders, professions, and cultural backgrounds to submit exhibition proposals. No professional curatorial experience was required. Participants could develop projects around the body, technology, social systems, popular culture, personal memory, or everyday life, using any theme, medium, or material.

Ye Funa acts as the project’s initiator, artist, and producer, translating the selected proposals into exhibitions presented on different people’s bodies. The project has incorporated painting, sculpture, engraving, collage, spray printing, 3D printing, QR codes, digital images, and other experimental techniques.

Rather than being installed inside a conventional gallery, these exhibitions are worn on fingers and toes. They travel with the body into streets, parties, museums, art fairs, music events, and private spaces. The wearer becomes the exhibition site, the audience, the participant, and the means through which the work circulates.

Curated Nails explores the relationship between bodily decoration and artistic display, private identity and public space, artists and curators, and professional art institutions and everyday participation. During its initial phase, the project received more than 110 proposals from participants inside and outside the art world, realised nearly 50 nail exhibitions, and organised a series of exhibitions, workshops, pop-up nail salons, parties, and public events across Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou.

Curated Nails turns the body into a mobile museum and proposes curating as an everyday practice anyone can participate in.

Installation view of Life Expo: Nails’ Hub, Ying Space, Beijing.

Nail to Go

2015
Interactive online and offline project

Artist: Funa Ye
Presented by Chronus Art Center (CAC)
Part of Folklore of the Cyber World, an online parallel exhibition of the Chinese Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale
Online exhibition: 17 September–16 October 2015
Offline event: 26 September 2015
Venue: Chronus Art Center, Shanghai
Strategic partner: TOSHOW
Nail-art support: O’NINE

Nail to Go is an online and offline participatory artwork developed by Funa Ye in 2015 as part of Folklore of the Cyber World, a series of online parallel exhibitions organised by Chronus Art Center (CAC), the media-art partner of the Chinese Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Created in collaboration with the social drawing platform TOSHOW, the project invited anyone to design a nail pattern through an online drawing interface and upload it to a shared digital archive. During the accompanying offline events, the submitted images were printed directly onto participants’ fingernails using a nail printer. The designs were also displayed online, on a large sculptural nail, and across an open nail-graffiti wall.

By connecting online drawing, social-media circulation, digital archives, and bodily display, Nail to Go transformed the fingernail into a personalised screen and mobile exhibition site. The project presented creativity and self-expression as collective, accessible activities rather than privileges limited by professional artistic training, gender, or institutional authority.

Nail to Go, installation view in The Ballad of Generation Y, curated by Zhang Ga, OCAT Shanghai, 2015–2016.

Nail Bank

Nail Bank is an archival and retrieval system developed from Funa Ye’s long-term project Curated Nails. It treats nail designs not simply as temporary decorations, but as reproducible units of artistic production that can be collected, classified, named, stored, retrieved, and reactivated.

Modelled partly on the logic of a genetic database, the project gathers existing nail-curating proposals and preserves both their physical and digital forms. Each design is assigned an archival identity so that it can later be searched, reproduced, or adapted to a new body and context. In this way, Nail Bank gives a form of “insurance” to artworks that are otherwise fragile, temporary, and destined to disappear as nails grow or are removed.

The installation included a vault containing physical nail samples organised by reference number, a digital archive of proposals and project documentation, and a Nail ATM through which visitors could search the database, select a design, and print it onto their own nails. Visitors could also print a selfie directly onto a nail. Additional elements included nail-making tools, pigments, a large ultraviolet curing lamp, polishing equipment, experimental nail objects, and a rotating display system.

By borrowing the language of banking, insurance, genetic storage, and institutional administration, Nail Bank reflects on how contemporary art is assigned value and preserved within systems of circulation. It also extends the broader logic of Curated Nails, in which the nail operates simultaneously as an exhibition space, medium, archive, institution, marketplace, and site of public participation.

Installation view of Exhibitionist: Nail Bank, Goethe Open Space, Shanghai, 2016.

Installation view of Superfetish: Spring/Summer, Goethe-Institut Beijing, 2016.

FAKE LANDSCAPE

I once read a political fiction novel News from Nowhere of William Morris by accident. The book is a dream one had after joining a debate on socialism.

“News from Shiman”is based on a residency project of residency in Shiman, a small village close to Lijiang Town. By interviewing 25 local young people aged from 16 to 30, Funa gives insight into the drastic changes that rural-to-urban migration brings to “the new countryside”. Inspired by the low-tech products in rural life and their folklore aesthetic taste, she express flourishing creativity through her latest installation and video work. Different with the ideal scenery in mass consciousness, the artificial “second nature” substitutes real art, appearing as decoration in the scenes of life.

Young dreams are overwhelmed by the harsh reality and gradually turn to listless self-entertainment. Why not going back to hometown – the “ideal utopia”?

Taste the Tablecloth in Shiman / Singel Channel Video/20 mins/2013

New Massage/ 5 Channel Videos/ 5 mins each/2013

Poker cards/ digital print photography with glass frames/ 2013

The Peach tree /180cm x100cm x100cm/2013

Yulong Holy Mountain/Foam & mixed media Sculpture/150cmx150cm/2013

Trash flowers/ digital print on canvas&wall paper/2013

Installation View at the 5th  Hubei Triennial 2015

Auto Majiang player /Installation/  75cm x84cm x84cm/2013

The Utopia landscape light box/110cm x 60cm/2013

photography

Installation View

Photo by Fang Zheng   ©execution team of Cosmopolis # 1.5

Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence: Co-presented by Mao Jihong Arts Foundation, Centre Pompidou and Chengdu Media Group , 2019

Solo Exhibition “Fire Golden flowers”, V art center, Shanghai, 2014

“Copyleft:Appropriation Art in China”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2016

Drawing Pogo Group Exhibition Taikang Space, Beijing.  06.01, 2017 – 07.29, 2017.

“Busan Biennale: Special Exhibition Asian Curatorial, Going, Going, Until I meet the tide”, Kiswire Sooyoung Factory, Busan，2014