After stay in the UK for more than 4 years I still feel isolated and wanted to create a project that explore the culture differences myself and other women face when living here.

 

When I first came up with the idea of young women in water it reminded people of Ophelia straight away. In the play Hamlet her beauty and death are read as the female subtext of the tragedy. In the mean time in the ancient Chinese Literature The Dream of Red Mansion, the author wrote: woman’s bones are made from water. This means woman are soft and easy to shape. We can almost adapt like water to anything, any area, like moving from one place to another, or adapting to a different life. However us, women can adapt to the new ways and live within that culture yet still struggle to feel a part of it like “fish out of water” which is both a Chinese and English saying.

 

 

This project is about cultural differences and social barriers. It charts the self-consciousness each Chinese woman feels as she moves from China to the UK, where she is obliged to adjust to a new social and cultural environment. We are like fish out of water until we find a new home.

 

--Sunsun Liu

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