Huanxiao Ma

Huanxiao is an animator from China whose work has many feminist expressions.

Before coming to RCA, she studied 3D animation and video art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has a subtle emotion and recognisable colours. Huanxiao likes to create scenes by building imaginative, storytelling and dramatic scenes.

She is also passionate about classical Chinese culture and has studied Beijing Opera professionally, experiences that have deeply influenced her. She uses animation to tell and focus on some of the difficult situations of women in contemporary times, and also to reflect on contemporary feminism through the lens of classical culture and classical drama.

In the future she will continue to focus on the study and creation of animation and video art.

The content of my films is inhabited by a reflection on the 'relationship' and the innovation of visual symbols. In my graduation film,I have placed the above mentioned issue in the context of 'relationship' and I have chosen the relationship between mother and child, can a surveillance mother be a real alternative to a human mother? As the girl grows up, she begins to question whether the love of the surveillance mother is real love or merely a social function based on the humanly constructed（or stetted-up） role of motherhood.

I chose “water“ as a visual symbol and cue to be used throughout my film. At the beginning when the archangel tells the girl that there will be no mother to claim her because her mother died in childbirth, the girl is submerged in water and she originally thought she was going to die. Then the surveillance mother appears and rescues her from the water, signifying 'salvation'. Then, as the girl moves forward, she encounters water again, which she fears, and the surveillance mother teaches her to live with water，play with water. Then the girl hides in the water, the control of the surveillance mother begins to appear and the conflict begins to erupt.