DAWN is a short film about a mother putting her child up for adoption. It's the second 3D animation I've produced and is the culmination of Jason Wiser's Advanced 3D Art and Animation course taught at the Harvard Extension School I took this Spring. It's a hypothetical and poetic piece about being a Chinese adopted girl and the history of the one child policy in China. These topics are ongoing themes and explorations in all of my art. Using the same character I created last year, the Goddess of Democracy as a real person, it's a statement about my complex relationship to China and its history of oppressive politics.
Last year at this time I was finishing up my first class with Jason, Intro to 3D Art and Animation. For that class I produced my first 3D animation project titled Goddess of Democracy. In this 17 second long piece, we see the same character I use in this film walking to the heavenly gates of Tiananmen Square, under the portrait of Mao Zedong. We watch as the enigma of the Goddess of Democracy, my character, walk to the top of the bridge that leads to the entrance of the palace, turn to face the camera, and obstruct the portrait of Mao with her torch of liberty. It was ironic and representative of myself as a critic of Mao and communist China. We're from the same exact province and city, Changsha, Hunan Province. Although we will never meet, our stories are inherently connected in so many ways.
Both this project and the first are representational of my relationship to contemporary Chinese history and politics. My characyer's outfit is very important as she is dressed in the same clothing worn by Tank Man, who wore a white button up with the sleeves rolled, black slacks, and a pair of dark shoes when he stood in front of the tanks that were sent in by the Chinese Government during the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 5th, 1989. For me, her outfit represents stoicism and bravery in the face of oppression. It also is a nod to a historical event China tries to pretend never happened, thus erasing the stories of all those killed and sacrificed during the Massacre and beyond.
The Goddess of Democracy, dressed as Tank Man, carrying the torch of liberty and now a baby in this new film, all speak to the complexity of Mao's China, the one child policy in a historically patriarchal society that was driven by communism, and the story of the thousands of baby girls put up for adoption during its reign. DAWN is a celebration of the bravery and love of the mothers and families who had no other option but to give up their children, those who society has come to call "China's Lost Girls". This piece is historical fiction although I used a real photograph taken by a close family friend of the police station where I was found as a baby in China.
In the most sincere and ironic ways I've always sought to intercept history and carve out a place for marginalized people. I don't feel marginalized myself because I'm fortunately from a very accepting and liberal home, but I feel like I have something to say about what it feels to be erased by power. In making art about this subject I remind the world, but especially China, we are not lost. "We" being all those whose stories have been overlooked.
My work is an ode to our collective resilience, our collective voice, and our collective power.