CUI YUXUAN
Documentary Photography, Place, Journey
Space, Narrative, Installation
Object, Text, Life, Act on Instinct
Info/Bio
Instagram©2024 Cui Yuxuan
CUI YUXUAN
Space, Narrative, Installation
Object, Text, Life, Act on Instinct
Instagram©2024 Cui Yuxuan
2024
He made a decision...
他做了一个决定...
He made a decision...
他做了一个决定...
Smoke as fine as spider silk,
烟雾细如蛛丝，
winding through the silence of the borderlands,
缠绕在边境的沉默中，
He was trapped in endless waiting,
他受困于无尽的等待，
until became a hole in the shape of a man in the landscape.
直到成为了风景中一个人形的洞。
Running deeper into the forest alone,
一个人朝向丛林更深处奔跑，
you hear the unsettling echo of oars from afar.
而你在远处听到船桨令人不安的回声。
In your memory,
在你的记忆中，
points of light flicker between reality and illusion,
灯火通明的光点在虚实之间摇曳，
in the past, you always looked towards the other shore.
过去你总是望着河的对岸，
Until those lights converged into a tangible gateway,
直到光点凝聚成真实的门户，
becoming a path of escape and loss.
成为逃亡与迷失的轨迹。
The wheel of fate spins beneath your feet,
命运的轮盘在脚下旋转，
他做了一个决定...
He made a decision...
他做了一个决定...
Smoke as fine as spider silk,
烟雾细如蛛丝，
winding through the silence of the borderlands,
缠绕在边境的沉默中，
He was trapped in endless waiting,
他受困于无尽的等待，
until became a hole in the shape of a man in the landscape.
直到成为了风景中一个人形的洞。
Running deeper into the forest alone,
一个人朝向丛林更深处奔跑，
you hear the unsettling echo of oars from afar.
而你在远处听到船桨令人不安的回声。
In your memory,
在你的记忆中，
points of light flicker between reality and illusion,
灯火通明的光点在虚实之间摇曳，
in the past, you always looked towards the other shore.
过去你总是望着河的对岸，
Until those lights converged into a tangible gateway,
直到光点凝聚成真实的门户，
becoming a path of escape and loss.
成为逃亡与迷失的轨迹。
The wheel of fate spins beneath your feet,
命运的轮盘在脚下旋转，
scenes of trauma and fear keep resurfacing,
创伤和恐惧的风景不断复现，
You keep losing as you move forward,
你在永远行进的过程中不断失去，
but in the shadow of loss, you are forced to continue on.
却在失去的幻影中被迫前行。
创伤和恐惧的风景不断复现，
You keep losing as you move forward,
你在永远行进的过程中不断失去，
but in the shadow of loss, you are forced to continue on.
却在失去的幻影中被迫前行。
Years later, I returned to my hometown in Northeast China, a place once described as a "transit station for immigrants." Together with my artist partner Huaiqian Liu, we’ve gathered many anecdotes and curiosities about border crossers. Among these, the legendary story of a famous North Korean defector, involving two daring escapes and a life of dispersion, left a deep impression on us. Weattempt to address these orally transmitted and constantly evolving rumors, exploring and visualizing the blurry boundaries between 'hearsay,' experience, and memory. In this narrative space, fragments of hearsay and unresolved clues lie scattered, waiting to be reactivated, pieced together, and reconstructed.
时隔多年，我回到故乡中国东北这片被形容为“移民的中转站”的土地，和艺术家伴侣刘怀谦采集了许多关于跨境者的奇闻逸事，其中有一位著名的脱北者具有传奇色彩的双重出逃和离散故事让我们印象深刻。我们试图处理这些口口相传、不断变形的谣言，探讨并视觉化“传闻”、经验与记忆之间的模糊地带。在这个叙事空间中，散落着道听途说的片段与未解的线索，等待被重新解读、拼接和重构。
I try to reorganize and reinterpret these old postcards I collected in a Kringloop shop in Rotterdam half a year ago, about a North Korean revolutionary opera called The Song of Mount Kumgang. Landscape is omnipresent, dominating our lives. I see sacred landscapes, promises that could never be fulfilled, and cursed absent people.
半年前我在鹿特丹的一家 Kringloop 二手商店里，翻到了这几张明信片，内容是关于一部名为《金刚山之歌》的朝鲜革命歌剧。我试图在这一项目中重新整理和诠释这些二手图像——风景无处不在，主宰着我们的生活。我看到了神圣的风景，永远无法兑现的承诺，以及被诅咒的缺席者。
在这件作品中，我们探索了两个截然不同但又奇妙相似的故事：一个来自大众文化的叙事，另一个则源于口口相传的传闻。韩剧《爱的迫降》讲述了一个关于跨越边境的爱情故事，女主角作为韩国财阀的继承人，在一次滑翔伞事故中被飓风卷入朝鲜境内，与一位朝鲜军官展开了一段禁忌的恋情。而我们在中朝边境的东北林间，偶然听闻了一个与此遥相呼应的故事：一个打塔人，为了获取松子而乘坐氢气球在高空作业，却在一阵强风下消失在天际。百日之后，他又神秘地返回了当地。
In this work, we explore two distinctly different yet intriguingly similar stories: one rooted in popular culture and idealized propaganda, the other stemming from hearsay. The Korean drama Crash Landing on You tells a story of love that transcends borders, where the female protagonist, an heiress of a South Korean conglomerate, is swept into North Korea by a storm during a paragliding accident, leading her to a forbidden romance with a North Korean military officer. Meanwhile, in the forests along the China-North Korea border, we came across a story that echoes this narrative: a pine nut harvester, who, while working high in the trees using a hydrogen balloon, was swept away by a strong wind, vanishing into the sky. A hundred days later, he mysteriously returned to the area.
我们将《爱的迫降》中的视觉元素、互联网搜集的图像以及亲自拍摄的照片进行翻拍和再创作，以幻灯片的形式在空间中再现，重新构建了这个打塔人故事的未解部分，通过对比和拼接这些看似平行又相交的叙事，试图探讨边界、身份、记忆与命运之间的复杂关系。
We rephotographed and reimagined visual elements from Crash Landing on You, images sourced from the internet, and photographs we shooted, reconstructing the untold middle part of the pine nut harvester story through a slideshow presentation in the exhibition space. By juxtaposing and intertwining these seemingly parallel yet intersecting narratives, the work seeks to explore the complex relationships between borders, identity, memory, and fate.
作品中影像的断裂与重组并非随机，而是有意设计的结果，旨在引发观者对于叙事空白的思考，其焦点不仅在于故事的开头与结尾，更在于那个“未被讲述”的过程，一个跨越边界与身份的隐喻性旅程。这是一种对记忆与传闻的重新审视，一次对现实与虚构的诗意重构。通过幻灯片放映的形式，我们邀请观众他们参与到这一叙事拼图的（未）完成之中。
The fragmentation and reassembly of images within the piece are not random but intentionally designed to provoke reflection on the narrative gaps. The focus is not only on the beginning and end of the stories but also on the "untold" process—a metaphorical journey across borders and identities. It is a reevaluation of memory and hearsay, a poetic reconstruction of reality and fiction. Through the slideshow presentation, we invite the audience to engage in the (un)finished puzzle of this narrative.
“ Where have you been? ”
“ Where are you going? ”
The oars take us around in circles.
是船桨带着我们绕圆圈。
“ Where are you going? ”
The oars take us around in circles.
是船桨带着我们绕圆圈。