We were lucky to catch up with Yao Dong recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Yao, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The most meaningful project to me personally is my experimental video work “YeYeBei,” which is about 13 minutes long. Currently, there is an initial version of this video, but I think it will take me another year or two to truly complete it. This project is very important to me. The title of the video in Chinese means “Grandpa, carry me,” which is something I often said to my grandfather during my childhood.
My grandfather is now ninety-five years old, in good health, loves playing mahjong, and is a very talkative and lively old man. However, a few years ago, he began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. I study in the United States while he is in China, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years, we have had very little time to see each other over the past three years. The main content of the film “YeYeBei” is the conversations I had with him when I visited him last summer.
Most of the time, he doesn’t remember who I am. Every morning, I have to introduce myself to him or ask if he remembers me. When he does recognize me, he is always very happy and starts talking endlessly about my childhood. He tells me: “Yao Yao was very cute as a child. Every afternoon, she would ask me to take her downstairs to play, saying ‘yeyebei, yeyebei,’ so I would carry her downstairs.” This was almost twenty years ago, when my grandfather was still strong enough to carry me on his shoulders. Every time, no matter where our conversation starts, it always ends with “yeyebei.” My grandfather’s memories of me seem to have frozen at that moment. Such conversations appear in my film seven or eight times, repeating, representing the time my grandfather is currently experiencing. In it, I am more like an observer and recorder, observing my grandfather and the version of myself in his memories.
The visuals in the video are also relatively fragmented collages, consisting of footage I captured in my daily life. I feel that editing these clips is like my grandfather and I piecing together our memories and time together. For example, my grandfather has an old watch that he loves but always feels is inaccurate, so he often sits alone adjusting it and doesn’t let anyone disturb him. My family once recorded this and sent it to me. I feel his actions are like trying to hold onto time and memories. In my work, I combined this footage with images of the phases of the moon, as the changing moon represents time and, in Chinese culture, also symbolizes hometown, nostalgia, and family reunions.
This work conveys the concepts of time and memory, which are central to my artistic creation. Moreover, it contains many personal emotions. I am still learning how to complete this piece better, learning how to organize emotions and memories related to family. This is why I believe this work is crucial to me.
Yao, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Dong Yao, twenty-two years old, come from Hangzhou, China. I am an artist and currently a senior student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My media are sculpture, installation, and video.
As for how I began my artistic career, I think it goes back to my childhood. My parents were very busy with work, and they were also very young at the time. They probably preferred dating to taking care of a child, and I didn’t have any siblings, so I had a lot of time alone. From then on, drawing and crafting became my favorite activities. Later, my parents enrolled me in a drawing class. Every day, the teacher there would pick me up from kindergarten and take me to their studio to draw, and my parents would come to pick me up before dinner. The teacher didn’t teach me anything specific; I could draw whatever I wanted. But after I finished, they would carefully write the date on the drawing and ask me to title it, treating me like an artist. I created freely and was taken seriously, which made me feel great, so it was only natural that I wanted to become an artist.
However, now I no longer focus on drawing or painting as a medium. Instead, I have shifted my main practice to exploring sculpture, installation, and video. Drawing for me has become more of a habit, a way to heal myself. It has turned into a private land to hold my subtle thoughts and emotions. On a larger scale, I believe sculpture, installation, and video give me more possibilities for outward expression. Three-dimensional works allow me to establish more connections with the space and the audience, while in video, time and space are more malleable. Through editing, I can place things together that cannot coexist in reality, establish new connections, or create a dream-like scene on the screen by shaping the timeline and imagery.
In terms of content, my works focus on nature, time, and memory. I hope to discover some subtle emotional connections between people and convey them to my audience. Through my mediums, I entrust my personal emotions to art and the vast world.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I used to care a lot about others’ opinions and adhered to a set of so-called standards, ignoring my inner self. This mindset was very painful for me, and I am learning how to break free from it.
My adolescence was spent under pressure; the expectations from my family and school placed a heavy burden on me because the “me” they expected was not the real me. This pressure and these expectations put me in a strange position, a feeling of being suspended in mid-air, and I had to maintain this suspended state while being afraid of failure and others seeing me fail. I had to meet certain standards, such as academic performance and behavior, which had nothing to do with me or my creations, but I had to produce a result, even if it was just superficial. In such an environment, I gradually developed a mindset of having to present a seemingly acceptable result, even if it was just on the surface, to establish an image that would satisfy others and protect my self-esteem.
The worst part is that this mindset and behavior unknowingly permeated my creations. In the early stages of my creative work, I couldn’t freely and sincerely engage with my mediums and content. When I saw the final results, I knew I wasn’t satisfied. Maybe my works could express part of my initial creative intention in form and content, but I knew the insincere parts, the superficial elements, and they made me unhappy. This mindset even made it impossible for me to be sincere in communicating with others in life and to learn humbly from others. I pinned myself in a position where I couldn’t move, couldn’t receive what the world was conveying to me, and couldn’t open my heart to communicate with the outside world. This habitual way of thinking is not easy to get rid of, and I am still struggling with it.
Through continuous creation, practice, and self-reflection, I think I am gradually freeing myself from this mindset that troubles and constrains me, though I know I still have a long way to go. Now I slowly realize that those so-called “self-esteems” are insignificant; they are the ropes that hang me. Only by letting go of them can I face my inner self. When I am grounded, I feel truly alive, so getting my hands, clothes, and shoes dirty doesn’t matter. Failing or rolling on the ground doesn’t matter either. Compared to floating in the air, this way I can gain more. I feel that both my creations and myself are gradually growing through this process. I am learning to face myself and my creations more sincerely.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I sincerely believe that being an artist is a very fortunate and happy thing. As I mentioned in the previous passage, continuous creation and observation allow me to self-reflect and realize the thoughts that cause me pain and constrain me. I feel that my creations are growing with me, and I am very much looking forward to seeing where we will go together.
Art keeps me curious about the world. It allows me to observe the world from a more subtle, gentle, and slow perspective, which is very important for maintaining oneself and guarding the inner self. Nowadays, people receive a lot of different energies and information every day, most of which are chaotic and low-frequency. I am often influenced by this information, but art always calms me down.
From those sincere creations, such as “YeYeBei,” I feel satisfaction and happiness. Such works also bring me genuine feedback from the audience. Their tears and shared experiences after viewing my work make me feel that my work and I have truly connected with the world. Sometimes, the definitions and feelings my audience shares about my work inspire me and make me realize details that even I hadn’t noticed, and I benefit from these insights.
In May of this year, I created a video installation –– “Untitled.” I poured a pile of sand into a corner of the gallery and projected a text and rising smoke onto the sand. The text reads:
很快我就不在这里了
Soon, I won’t be here.
也许下周我就会离开
Perhaps gone by next week.
也许就是明天
Maybe even tomorrow.
能和你在一起我很高兴
I think we had a good time together.
希望你一切都好
Wishing you well.
This is a work about farewell, but I don’t want to attribute its meaning to a specific person. “Time flows away like sand through fingers,” is the original intention behind using sand as a material. Later, some viewers told me they saw the sand as an hourglass or a desert, representing transient time and vast space. I really liked this interpretation. I feel that through this work, I found a way to communicate with the audience, and it is one of the works I am most satisfied with so far.
The process of creating, communicating with the audience, and facing the world together with my work fills my life with positive energy and gives me enough anticipation for the future. Art is my way of existing in this world, and it is art that has made me who I am today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dongyao.cargo.site/
- Instagram: @01_yao_
Image Credits
Dong Yao’s website
https://dongyao.cargo.site/