Solo Exhibition: Looking for Tutu

I have always been interested in animals. As an only child, my mom raised lots of animals in our backyard to accompany me in China. I used to draw them on the huge kitchen wall covered with paper while my mom was cooking. I was drawing and telling her stories of each of them, and she would add some twists into the plot. Strong bonds were created between me and those creatures. A few years ago, I visited Sea Turtle Recovery center at Turtle Back Zoo in New Jersey. I was deeply touched by the mission of rehabilitating sick and injured sea turtles and releasing them back into the wild. After returning home, I began to create drawings in series to tell the story of a young girl, Kaia, on an adventure to rescue her best friend, a sea turtle named Tutu, after a catastrophe created by human behavior. These metaphoric drawings bring back memories of my childhood and reflect my concern for the current society. I complied the drawings together as a picture book of Kaia and Tutu’s Journey through the World.

Many people and corporations are driven by economic incentives these days, they are detached from the surrounding nature and our ecosystem. My expression of art is soft yet provoking. I use children’s perspective to expose the heaviness of humanity; innocent hearts tell the truth. By exploring children’s aesthetic vocabulary in a new era, my artwork takes a critical view of our social and environmental issues; my drawings embody an urgency to cherish and protect our nature, especially in the present world.