We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Juyi Mao. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Juyi below.

Juyi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Tell It to Spring is a short film that merges analog film aesthetics with concrete poetry. What makes this film meaningful is the way it allowed me to work across forms like Super 8 film, sound art, and performance without needing to resolve them into a linear narrative. I used the film’s perforations as miniature frames for animated drawings, images, and personal video fragments. This method became a way for me to speak without being answered. As I layered the work with ecological references to plant migration, biological invasion, and diasporic longing, the film deepened into a meditation on displacement, not just of people but of species and seasons.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Juyi Mao, a filmmaker and visual artist based in Brooklyn, originally from Hefei, China. My practice spans experimental film, sound art, and multimedia installation. I work across analog and digital formats, and I’m interested in how memory, displacement, language, and diaspora can be expressed through time-based media. Much of my work is deeply personal but resonates with broader questions around resistance, colonial histories, and the politics of visibility.

I studied visual art before transitioning into filmmaking. My earliest works were essayistic and minimal elements with voice, still images, silence but over time they evolved into layered films that bring together performance, archival material, ambient sound, and poetic narrative. I was particularly drawn to experimental film because it allowed me to unlearn conventional storytelling and instead focus on textures, rhythms, and emotional residue. I’ve since completed over many short film and video projects and exhibited or screened my work at places like the Museum of Modern Art Film, Anthology Film Archives, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, and various international film festivals.

What sets my work apart is the way it balances vulnerability and form. I care deeply about the poetics of structure and how image, sound, and pacing can suggest something just beyond what’s seen or said. I often work with outdated or “obsolete” media such as VHS, magnetic tape, and celluloid film. They are not out of nostalgia, but because these materials carry a certain weight and fragility that reflects the stories I tell. I’ve also taught film and sound art in academic and community settings, helping others access experimental tools and artistic practices.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, being an artist is the ability to transform uncertainty into form to turn questions, memories, and emotions that don’t fit into words into something visual, sonic, and embodied. Art allows me to hold contradictions without resolving them. It gives me permission to dwell in ambiguity, and to make space for things that are usually pushed aside: longing, displacement, slowness, silence.

There’s also something deeply meaningful about witnessing a viewer connect with a work and it is not because they “understand” it, but because it resonates on a level beyond language. When someone tells me a certain sound made them feel touched, or a flickering film image reminded them of a dream they forgot they had, I feel like it’s a bridge between their interior world and mine.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The most fundamental issue is that we’ve created this myth that artists should suffer for their art, that financial instability is somehow romantic or necessary for authentic expression. We need to shift how we define value. Creative work should not be measured only by profit. Support should extend to alternative art spaces and community projects. These may not have commercial success, but they create deep cultural and emotional impact. A healthy creative ecosystem grows not only in museums and galleries, but also in libraries and gardens. There’s this assumption that if your art matters, someone with money will sponsor you, but that creates a system where only certain types of art and certain types of artists get support. What we really need is recognition that cultural diversity strengthens the entire ecosystem, and that means creating pathways for artists from different backgrounds. Support is not just about money. It is about belief. Belief that art has value even when it is quiet. Even when it is strange. Even when it does not sell.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://maojuyi.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juyi_mao/?hl=en
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/maojuyi