YI LIAN

YI LIAN

ASK FOR THE MOON

CURATED BY CAI LIYUAN

In 2010, Yi Lian started to record his dreams. He repeated the course of these diaristic accounts for thousands of days and nights. From the moment he transferred his visions into written word, the dreams established independent structures and new meanings.

The 10-year period of time encompassing this project is long enough to constitute the principal aspects of Yi Lian’s methodology. His videos combine elements of both confusion and optimism; they are quiet and mysterious, but also full of imagination and hope. Akin to bizarre theatrical displays, many forms appear and disappear in the dreamscape. Random trees, animals, people, bodies, etc. follow their own set tracks but happen to all intersect in his version of space and time.

Yi often constructs his work from a third-person perspective, attempting to relate to the viewer — the Other — through the feelings and predicaments in living beings beside his own. Although watching a video is different from physically dreaming yourself, the artist believes that all mediums of expression can be thought of as externalized parts of dreams because of their similar characteristic of entangled interpretation and experience.