Huaniao Art Island
Ourania(Rani) Amvrazis
The Tension between is a site-specific installation explores the tensions inherent with establishing and growing a new economy, through cultural tourism, and the impact on the people and the environment – what can be lost and gained with the development.
Rory Daniel
Tears of Blue attempts to re-imagine the human body as another lifeform. Something organic, mysterious, and almost unrecognisable. It juxtaposes these imaginary creatures with microscopic views of Noctiluca Scintillans, the bioluminescent algae that glow in the sea around the island. Being neither plant nor animal, the algae offer a point of contemplation against what it means to be human, and what it means to be an animal.
Bixiao(Frankie) Zhang
Using digital communication technology as literal “medium”, this generative art project “Lost wind of the flower birds” experiments with presentification of the intangible past from Hua Niao Island. Using the generative AI’s “imagination” to open hidden fields and lost narratives from tangible traces at the site, letting the digitally imagined landscape act as the prosthetic arm to time’s lost limb.
Yongping Ren
Everyone will experience a rebirth from the ashes at some time in their life. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world may feel like a rebirth from the ashes. We have more time to rethink about ourselves, others, our nature. This artwork will open this history that cannot be forgotten in the form of a Chinese painting scroll. The video combined graffiti from Melbourne city watch house and Guqin Master piece “Flowing Stream” performed by Zhang XinYu.
Neryhs Wo
ʻ逍遙ʼ, meaning free and unfettered, utterly carefree, in English. The expression is originally from an ancient Chinese book called ‘Zhuangzi’ written by the famous Chinese philosopher/writer, Zhuang Zhou. 逍遙 is the highest stage of freedom in one’s mentality. Carrying no burden in mind, having no troubles with the outer world, owning a peaceful relationship with oneself and anything else.
Yan Wang
Daily Catch is a site specific photographic project exploring found take away food inside plastic bags to explore the cultural connotations and food relationship with female identity. Using scan-ography, the artist investigates both the habitat of food and its relation to the culture of using single use plastic bag containers in contemporary China. The images result in unsettling, abstract, larger than life size photographic prints making visible mundane materials and the environmental impacts of food waste.
Mee-Yee Chan(Clara)
The symbionts (children of compost) are born as my response to Haraway’s call for “collaborative and divergent story-making practice” in her Camille Stories. They act as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling us to experience universe, and collectively transform the ruined universe by imagination and proposition of stories.
Qiu Ruiqi
Warrior Tattoo is a visual art project composed of photographs, a video and a poem. This work aims to honor the female identity and to respect the possibilities of gender. I chose to tattoo female organs (womb, vulva, and breasts) on an Asian woman’s portrait that implies my race and female identity to encourage female individuals to reflect their female experience.
Haoran(Renee) Yuan
“I See the Clouds of September'' is a poetic photography project produced during the Covid-19 Stage 4 lockdown period in Melbourne. The project features a framework of affect-trauma in relationship under the context of COVID-19 pandemic, describes solitude and a sense of neutral distancing attitude between self-consciousness and social connection.
Ruijia(Grace) Fan
Knotting is an ancient way of transmitting information, which was once a very effective way of recording events and exchange information before people learned to use language and words. The project aims to documents a series of stories about the island's indigenous people, especially the fishermen, and their connection to their homeland.
Annike 孙冬晨
The aging of the islanders on the island is very serious. Since 1998, the population of Shengsi Islands has been showing negative growth. According to the 2020 census, more than 31.3% of residents are over 60 years old. Their children left Huaniao island to study, work, get married, and have children, yet they still stay on the island and continue their traditional way of life. They are the witnesses of the historical changes of Huaniao island and the spreaders of traditional culture.
Artist Collective
On this beautiful island, we will present modern cultural integration and rural self-reliance. I hope that a wonderful and sustainable story can be recorded here!
Gao Xiaowu 高孝午
Rebirth series by artist Gao Xiaowu reveal metaphorical and non-extreme rational thinking in a gentle and peaceful way. He puts forward questions such as what human beings should do and what kind of development is healthier in order to express his concern, criticism and reflection on the current society.
Zhong Liang 钟亮
When the house is in ruins, the body and memory are lost in it. This is no longer a home but where life and will still remain. The wooden skeleton still firmly supports its body. This is its spirit. Rebrushing its skeleton with red is not to prove its rebirth, but to show its will and life. The red is living blood and a mark of its will. I hope that this red color can catch our sight and arouse our thinking about the life of our home and destination while it’s proceeding the old things.
Aoi Suwa 諏訪葵
This work uses digital and analog alchemy to overlap video images of waves with actual waves to create previously unknown landscapes. The materials used are video images of waves near Huaniao Island and a river close to me in Japan, as well as waves that I created in a pot. I projected the video images onto the waves, which I recorded and then edited to create the final work.
Dong Shiyao 董仕瑶
The theme of my works is about natural healing. I use interactive books to guide visitors through projects I want them to experience on Huaniao Island, so as to achieve healing effect. Supplemented by other interactive gears,the interaction is mainly based on hollowed-out books, in which way I hope that visitors can interact with nature at fixed points.
Fei Xiang 费翔
Based on the natural environment of Huaniao Island, this work shows the impact of human behavior on natural environment with the help of image interaction technology. Audience can move their hands to change the direction and speed of the ‘ocean current’ in the video,which has a real satellite map of Huaniao Island in the middle.
Qinmeng Li 李沁梦
Huaniao Island has a history of more than 2,000 years. Now, with the islanders moving out gradually, a group of young people settle in, adding new vitality to the island from outside in. Just as breathing which inhales fresh air and exhales unbeneficial substances, Huaniao Island, driven by objective factors, develops in a similar way, changing silently and softly in harmony.
Wang Zhaoyan 王朝研
Whale fall in deep sea starts with sunken carcass; living islands with desolate reefs. It seems that new life comes to being with nourishment from a greater life. Huaniao Island, once merely a separate piece from the sea, has its own culture and life now. If you pass by, please treat the plants as messengers delivering you a chance to experience ‘breath’ of the island.
Wang Yi 王逸
This work is a hand-operated mechanical linkage device inspired by seagulls standing in rows on the beach. Gently ronate the handle, and the beating sounds rise. Similar to a toy, this work attempts to awaken the pure and colorful inner child that lies inside everyone.
Wu Xinwei 吴心薇
From the perspective of an artist, the work, completed through video device and audience interaction, focuses on the relationship between original islanders and tourists. It explores the living states of original islanders who preserve their own love and stories through long years and are reluctant to leave, as well as the island state when tourists spend limited time wandering on the island having fun.
Shen Si Qi 沈思祺
With the special optical performance, mirrors become our daily necessities. The world is both true and virtual in the mirror. Therefore, its reflected images are often used by us to ‘deceive’ ourselves. By interlacing mirror and frames with each other, this work produces on mirror the images that do not exist in the surrounding environment. Facing in front of the mirror, the audience will see the perfect integration of two unrelated worlds, with them standing in it too.
Zhang RuiHan 张睿涵
This work starts by collecting special or representative old discarded objects along with islanders’ memories about the past. The old discarded objects are then vacuum-preserved together with relevant memory stories, so that stories and objects can be disassembled and reconstructed together, generating the power to retrospect memories in the new environment.
Zhang Weiwie 张薇薇
Built on old objects on the island, such as old houses, abandoned wooden boats, furniture, etc.. Wrapped in stretch cloth, giving these wastes a new shape and life. Seemingly intangible, but tangible in reality, arousing everyone’s guess , curiosity and memory.