YiXi Zhao

@rabbitceci

My project “17” consists of three parts: still images, four minutes and thirty seconds of moving images, and Polaroids. The project is based on my reflections on the highly competitive education system in China as well as East Asia, and seeks to explore the subjectivity of adolescence in a repressive environment and whether this traumatic experience can have a further impact on a person.

I named the project “17” which comes from my personal understanding of what it means to be 17 as an East Asian/Chinese identified person. In China, 18 is the legal age of adulthood, usually the age when Chinese students finish high school and pass the gaokao (a standardized college entrance exam held annually in Mainland China) to enter university. 17 is a delicate age when we stand at the intersection of being a child and a teenager, facing the unknown world of the coming adult. 18 is a clear dividing line, while 17, in contrast, is a contradictory and chaotic state of mind: the anticipation of becoming an adult, the desire to leave the harsh education system behind, the fear of the unknown world of adulthood, the confusion about one’s future dreams, studies and career. The age of 17 seems to be a road that has been travelled for a long time and is finally coming to an end, but it also seems to be a fleeting moment just in one second.

On the way to constructing my own world of aesthetics, I was influenced by the dreamcore subculture, the East Asian horror film culture, and theories about poor images. Meanwhile, I try to capture the same content through different camera devices and see the different devices as portals to different worlds. In this project, I seek to engage the viewer with me in a dreamlike, non-linear narrative that explores the impact of a traumatic experience on the construction of one’s subjectivity.