Between Innocence and the Unknow

When I think back to my earliest memories, I return to a mountainous region in northern China where my family once lived. The mountains were alive with light — slopes folding into mist, streams whispering through stones. Among these impressions, one moment stands apart: a childhood afternoon when I encountered a snake while playing with other girls in the hills. I was the last in line, and as the serpent crawling down from the hill, my friends scattered in panic. I followed, terrified yet oddly aware of the beauty in that sudden movement — the shimmer of its scales, the curve of its body disappearing into the wild.

That experience has lingered as an early lesson in contradiction — how wonder and fear can coexist, how the natural world mirrors the fragility of human emotion. Over time, this memory evolved into a visual language in my paintings: shifting forms, translucent layers, and a dialogue between attraction and repulsion.