Chenming Zhang 张辰明

I focus on people’s reflection on drought, their longing for rain and their expectation for a livable environment. So I want to have a dialogue with the sky, and I want to write a letter to the sky to tell people’s expectations for rain.

China people will call the sky LAOTIANYE, which means that they regard the sky as their grandfather and endow it with personality. This is a very interesting phenomenon, which brings people closer to the sky. When people regard the sky as a person, it becomes possible to talk with the sky. People can talk as equals as their elders and pray for rain like the sky.

At the same time, I thought about how to locate Beijing more accurately, so I found the element of swallow kite in Beijing. In the traditional culture of China, kites have the function of transmitting information. People fly kites in spring to pray for a good weather all year round. At the same time, I want to use ancient poems as decorative elements to put on kites. I think words are powerful and warm, and ancient poems condense people’s demands and expectations. Ancient and modern people, even people all over the world, have the same feelings.

I think the kite, as a demonstration element, can’t constitute a dialogue alone, so I decided to fly it and record the whole process from communication, production to flying in the form of documentary. This behavior is like sending people’s words on the ground to the sky, just like sending a letter. I think the practice of this sense of ceremony is meaningful, powerful and can touch the audience’s psychology.

I also made a calendar. The purpose is to let the audience clearly understand the precipitation in the past year, which is the information conveyed to people by the sky. With the method of data, the audience can intuitively understand the urgency of water resources, climate and other issues. In this way, people can clearly perceive the disparity between sunny days and rainy days when reading this calendar. When people see the past, they will reflect on the present, and they will also spontaneously reflect on what we should do about the future water resources and our environment.

The inspiration of the project comes from a Peking Opera “Suolinnang”. The story is that when a woman got married in ancient China, her mother usually gave her daughter a bag filled with money and jewelry as a good blessing, hoping that she could have a baby early. However, due to historical reasons, the Performer of this Peking Opera is a male actor, so I feel a great sense of contrast, a young woman played by a male, and she was blessed by her mother to have a baby early in the play.

By combining the development of Chinese Peking Opera (due to historical reasons, Peking Opera was once only played by men as women, which led to a large number of homosexuals) and the history of LGBT development and struggle in the west, I expressed the possible future direction of China and the thoughts given to us in the closed environment.

At the same time, I reflected on the problems faced by LGBT group parenting in today’s society. No matter what methods are adopted, such as surrogacy or adoption, they can’t be separated from female groups, because women are the main body of childbearing, so when the traditional concept of childbearing conflicts with the awakening of women’s self-rights, it is time for us to reflect. I also reflect this point in my works. Embroidering on bags represents women, because embroidery is usually made by women, and calligraphy is usually a manifestation of patriarchy and male power. I put the bills and pamphlets representing patriarchy into the embroidered bag representing women’s rights. The unity of opposites is just like the historical reflection of men playing women in Beijing opera, and it is also like the dilemma faced by LGBT parenting in the traditional society.