The flash fiction
Seen from a macro perspective, each individual is a temporary aggregation of countless elements shaped by historical conditions. History exists somewhere between the past and the present, connected only by human memory—yet memory itself is unreliable. Between history and memory, is there such a thing as collective memory? Can there ever be an accurate history? Can human imagination truly reach the past? In this reality, shaped by both speculation and memory, it seems that the truth of history survives only in fragments.
I do not dare to claim any history I’ve known as definitive. To me, history—like the self—is a series of temporary formations that occur under nonlinear time. It is a fleeting yet eternal afterimage, a resonance that transcends space and time. In André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, he proposed the method of automatic writing, in which thoughts are allowed to emerge unconsciously, forming a stream of intuitive connections. In Calvino’s Invisible Cities, imagination reconstructs entire cities from memory—cities that are fictional, ancient, absurd, and suspended in fractured space and time. Both authors explore the same question: how to use fragments of dreams, memories, and events to recompose the real.
How can different modes of imagination help us divide, reorganize, and deconstruct reality and history? How can we trace an interwoven thread among cultures, individuals, and material forms, starting from the everyday? Carrying these unresolved questions, I returned to Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria six months later. I tried to respond using the language I know best—photography. Through it, I began creating new events, allowing them to become experience, to become living stories.
The better life
This photography project focuses on the wedding ceremonies of the Wenzhou immigrant community in Paris. Since the arrival of the first generation of immigrants, the survival logic of Wenzhou people in France has always revolved around labor and accumulation. As the largest Chinese community in France, Wenzhou people have continued their pronounced tradition of commerce and their strong awareness of family resources. As a social ritual, the wedding is a focal point for the cohesion of family and community relations. Attire, ceremonies, and the arrangement of scenes make this moment highly symbolic: wealth, belonging, dignity, and happiness are condensed here, forming their collective imagination of the future and their ideals.
What interests me is the decorative tendency presented in these weddings: vibrant artificial flowers, intense colors, strict ceremonial order, and the basic need to simultaneously satisfy demands for convenience and practicality. This consistency across time is not an unconscious stagnation, but perhaps an active cultural strategy — a cultural orientation that prioritizes functionality. Such cultural reproduction allows them to maintain internal group identity while constructing their own boundaries within a foreign society.
I focus on color, ornamentation, and spatial order, attempting to point to a deeper reality: how resources circulate, how identities are confirmed, and how culture continues and solidifies within a diasporic context. By gazing at these seemingly similar scenes, we may better understand the logic of this “functional aesthetics” and how a group’s relationship with the world is manifested through ritual.
Information
CV
She based in Paris and China.
/Solo
YIYI Sphère, Paris, 2025
Carré Amelot, Espace Culturel de la Ville de La Rochelle, 2022
Chambre 07, la festivals de photographie, Ardèche, 2021
Galerie du Crous, Paris, 2019
/Group selected
Festival photo FLEAC DECLICS, November 2022
Archaeologies of the Rural Present: Xiuwu's Scenery, Crops, Crafts and Demeanor, Xiuwu and Shanghai, China, 2020
RAIBAUDI WANG GALLERY,Paris, 2019
Galerie Horizon Paris, 2018
Work in Progress, Les Rencontre d’Arles, Arles, 2018
Work in Progress, Les Rencontre d’Arles, Arles, 2017
Performance/Show
Festival de Fotografia Arica, August, 2022
PHOTO SLAM, UNE NOUVELLE GÉNÉRATION, Les rencontres d'Arles, July, 2022
Prix
The Athens Photo Festival 2024,Shortlisted
International Photography Grant 2019, Nominee
The Athens Photo Festival 2019,Shortlisted
Le prix Alexandra Carle, 2018, Winner
Press
AMC magazine Févier 2022 : LES MONDES PARLLÊLES DE DENG JIAYUN
France 3 ：Photographie : "le fantasme chinois" vu par Deng Jiayun