Embodied Inheritance
2025
“That day, the mist began rising from the mountain in the early morning. We gathered around the fire pit.
Daba, our shaman, stood among us, facing Limu Mountain. She lit a pile of pine needles, sending thin white smoke spiralling into the sky. The young people of Diaoti, watching the smoke, poured wine, scattered flowers, and offered gifts to Limu Mountain.
‘Limu Mountain, our Mother Limu, what are your shoes made of? The sea is your shoes. What is your belt made of? The green pine is your belt. What is your hat made of? The stone is your hat. The fire pit is where your soul rests, and where we were born. We are your children, bound together; the blood-red roots will guide us home to your embrace. Limu Mountain, our Mother Limu, what makes you silent? What brings your death? Limu Mountain, our Mother Limu, where will we go?’ ”
“By the end of the ritual, the purple mist had spread to the mountain’s base.
Slowly, it swallowed the entire Diaoti tribe, wrapping everything into a circular ball, and leaving only Limu Mountain behind.
A gust of wind came, and everything disappeared into nothingness.”
Video, 06’17, Dimensions variable, 2025 Video, 21’31, Dimensions variable, 2025 "Cui" is a figure jointly summoned by the artist and her mother, merging the features and memories of three generations of women. She is them—and more than them. Within the dense net of patriarchal and ethnic minority systems, the voices of ethnic minority women are often swallowed into silence. Yet, we know, they endure: in the mountain fog, in the fire’s dying embers, in the whispered stories from mothers to daughters. They move through the fissures of history’s exclusions and the margins of imagination, seeking the remnants of matrilineal tradition in Li society, learning language from matrilineal ancestors, from the land, and from nature.