The series of short videos consists of five episodes, each of which presents a character in a different time and space environment, allowing artist Tao Hui to rethink the role of “dressing” and “performing” in people’s identity and transformation. When the entire series is finished, the narrative paths that have been severed in the intervening time and space may intertwine, creating new curves. Tao Hui’s recent works are full of references and appropriations of emerging media forms. This time, he still uses the form of short social videos to create for the public, but his content is a departure from the mainstream: he takes the initiative to weaken the plot density, and instead presents the story in a poetic, weak narrative, multi-layered and multi-temporal way.
Tao Hui was born in 1987 in Yunyang, Chongqing, China. He graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute with a BFA in oil painting in 2010. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
Despite his degree in oil painting, Tao has moved toward video and installation, drawing from personal memories, visual experiences, and popular culture to weave an experimental visual narrative, the focus of which is often our collective experience. Running throughout his work is a sense of misplacement vis-à-vis social identity, gender status, ethnicity, and cultural crisis, prompting the audience to face their own cultural histories and living conditions. He won the Contemporary Art Archive Distinction Award from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2008 and the Art Sanya & Huayu Youth Award in Sanya in 2015. He also won the Grand Prize at the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists and the international competition sector of the Kino der Kunst Festival in 2017. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the inaugural Sigg Prize by M+ in Hong Kong.
Original Music: Li Daiguo
Starring: Alex Zou, Gao Rongfang
Guest stars: William Wen, Wei Yi, Wei Shuhan, Che Xuanqiao, Cao Yixiao
Producer: William Wen
Cinematographer: Jason Wen
Assistant Cinematographer: Hao Lichao, Zhang Kunlong
Makeup Artist: Guo Liqing
Colorist: Luo Qiang
Lines: Wei Yi
Stills: Cao Yixiao