Unrequited Love

Photography
Unrequited Love
Wild Dancers
Summer Maze
Unequal Invaders

Design
Basements
Unrequited Love
Huangzi

The reflection and Narcissus #1, 2019, Digital Photography, 60*40cm

As a senior unrequited lover, I’ve had my heart set on many people at different times. It’s like being in an absurd monologue, where I direct, act, and watch myself in “A Letter from a Strange Woman”. The theater is everywhere, and every scene with “him” becomes a stage. It’s not just in real life, but also in the imaginary world that unrequited lovers possess.

Initially, I wanted to express the unspeakable feelings of unrequited love through a monologue. However, I started to question myself: why do I choose unrequited love instead of pursuing true love? What do I really desire?

3: Set up the stage

With the actors and the scripts, I tried to fabricate the scene descriptions of the unrequited love and put them on the stage.

I use the sentences in “A letter from a strange woman” as my lines.

Rehearsal of actors, scripts and lines before going on stage.

I began to try to take photos of my unrequited love with 110 camera, but due to therestriction of the conditions of candid, most of the films were underexposed, just likethe unrequited love. I like such narrative form, so I draw hidden content like a secretcode using illustrations, and designed the way of peeping.

The story is hidden in 110 films.

Cartoon with encrypted symbols in the film.

My idea of real candid and on-site viewing through the telescope.

1: Producing actors

Because I want to continue to love secretly, the information about my unrequited love needs to be encrypted, so I decided to discuss the unrequited love using the language of others. Pygmalion carved the perfect female statue in his dream using a piece of ivory. I collected many facial features in my ideal and used them to collage the image of the person I secretly love. He is the embodiment of the ideal image in my mind, and he has my ideal appearance. I made a certificate photo by putting on his mask to and tried to take a picture with this image.

Galatea, 2014, Composite materials, 23*16cm

Some stories about him, 2014, Book, 10*18cm

2: Sort out the script

I sorted out the films related to unrequited love, made screenshot of similar plots, summarized eight moments in unrequited love, and edited them into a booklet.

Similar scene is shown in the movie where Alfie and Aimeili are tangling in bed.

The description of the heart being grasped tightly in “A letter from a strange woman”.

Aimeli and Zixi look forward to the return of the boys they love secretly in the movie.

“I started sleepwalking that afternoon”, 2018, Composite materials, Varied

I present the scenes I get from peeping into a number of “small theaters” through ways of fiction, such as movie clips, text and miniature landscape, which are realistic stories. Then I put the small theaters into small boxes with different lengths, and use them to tell my unrequited love story, so that the audience can watch the contents of the boxes from a peeping perspective and to obtain the concrete experience of these fictional scenes.

4: Uninformed performers and hidden audiences

I began to look back on the relationship between the person loving others secretly and the person being loved. The unrequited love is that one side hides in the dark and makes the everything on the stage belong to the other side. The person loving others secretly and the person being loved are like invisible audiences and actors who don’t know about themselves at all. I designed a space device enclosed by an one-way mirror and wall, which explained that the Voyer and the voyee live in an unequal space and enjoy the freedom they cannot enjoy in the relationship. At the moment, the appreciation is objective and free, while the person being watched on the stage is not aware of this.

Space diagram

When the audience enters the a space of the device, they only see themselves in the mirror.

The audience comes from space A to space B. The seat of the audience in space B can see the “unknown performer” in space A from the one-way mirror.

5: The reflection and Narcissus

I’m more fascinated by the imagination in my head than I am looking forward to what’s going on with each other. Through gazing at each other, without real contact and getting along with each other, I make each other gradually become the projection of my fantasy and desire, and even constantly reshape a more complete image of each other to make myself more fall in love with him. Such imagination makes the object transcend its own reality, and such a way may not only be limited in unrequited love or love, but also become a habit of getting along with the world. Therefore, I want to reflect on my behavior and discuss the relationship between wish projection and reality itself by expressing this emotional state.

I try to take pictures of my unrequited love in the real world with my camera, and the images I take make me get the objects that I gaze at. I put on the white bodysuit to become an invisible audience, and become the carrier of the object image in the projection, so as to approach him, embrace him, become him, and change him. When he entered the stage and disappeared on the stage, he was not himself, but an image projected on myself.

At this time, “he” is like the “image” in the water that Narcissus fell in love with. The ripples distort it, the gaze changes it. I also tried to overlap several layers of images by arranging the shooting space. But this involves thinking and discussion from more perspectives, so I haven’t used this form in my current creation.

Some early attempts at the feasibility and formality of candid.

The reflection and Narcissus, 2019, Digital Photography, 60*40cm

The reflection and Narcissus #2-4, 2019, Digital Photography, 60*40cm

The reflection and Narcissus #5-6, 2019, Digital Photography, 60*40cm