Five Nights, Aquarium

Five Nights, Aquarium is a non-linear narration weaved by photographs and five short written works.

Five Nights, Aquarium is a non-linear narration weaved by photographs and five short written works.

I've always being discovering how the recent history have affected me and my generation. I was born in late 1980s in China. My childhood experience of China's old system collapsing has brought me uncertainties towards values and beliefs, and doubts about the difference between reality and fiction.

I came to United States for school two and half years ago, and I try to reconstruct my inner journey from trips I’ve made between my home country China and San Francisco during these two years in a truthful way, but the overloaded feelings of estrangement and desolation created by the journey have transformed my memories into illusions of confinement. Due to this confinement, my journey story became a space-time, which resembles an aquarium. In this aquarium, cityscapes are fish tank decorations, people are fish, and writings are tank labels.

I chose five nights in the whole reconstructed journey story, using five semi-fictional short stories as clue, to portray the imaginary aquarium. The stories are cold yet intimate, sensual yet intangible. The narration of journey moves from real to imagined spaces, exploring the boundaries between autobiography and fiction.