Daily Inspiration: Meet Emi Sun

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emi Sun.

Hi Emi, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am a cross-disciplinary artist with a focus on experimental game design. I was born in Beijing, China, and at birth, I was diagnosed with a rare skin condition called juvenile xanthogranuloma (JXG). While this condition is not life-threatening, it visibly covers my entire body, making my appearance different from others.

However, I consider myself really lucky. Throughout my growth, despite facing many challenges, my family and friends have always been by my side, loving and supporting me as I pursue my dreams as an artist.

I came to the United States for my undergraduate studies. I attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for four years in Baltimore, majoring in General Fine Arts. After graduating, I furthered my studies in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of the Arts.

My experiences have made me particularly sensitive to themes of physical touch, vulnerability, and love. My works often take interactive forms, regardless of the medium. They always invite audiences to playfully experience and lead them to think through the serious ideas behind the game formats.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My creative process is a journey that is accompanied by pain, yet it serves as a guide toward self-redemption.

Perhaps influenced by my skin, I am an incredibly fragile and sensitive individual, easily wounded in relationships, however, mostly in the relationship with myself. I often find myself in self-contradiction, judging and hurting my own thoughts.s.

In the midst of this complexity, I became eager to make connections, either with the world around me or within myself.

My creative process is always a dialogue with myself; the stories I made naturally led me to walk closer to my inner self. Simultaneously, my works attract many artists who are just as soft as me. By talking to them, their soft words allow me to reexamine myself. All these connections leading me to an ability of self-acceptance and self-embrace.

These experiences have made self-love a long-term contemplation for me. Whether it’s physically a hug, appreciating self, or mentally self-healing and self-rescue, I am on a continual journey to create works that aspire to evoke a sense of softness, both within myself and in the audience.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My creative works are primarily categorized into two major types: touchable and digital. The touchable category encompasses physical creations, including performances, wearable sculptures, board games, party games, interactive books, and more. During my graduate studies, I focused more on digital creations, specifically video games and animations. However, the keywords central to my themes remain consistent.

In touchable works, I use the human body as a canvas, sometimes even as a playground. Pieces like “Soft Games” (2021), “Body Twister” (2018), and “Finger Twister” (2023) are interactive experimental games that require participants to engage in physical contact following specific rules. Hug is a recurring action as well, such as “Hug Monster” (2019), a performance where I wear a coat covered in pom-pom balls and invite the audience to hug me. These works challenge the boundaries of individual body awareness and potential relationships with others.

My focus on themes of touching and embracing stems from my sensitivity to my own skin and appearance. When creating video games and animations that incorporate more narrative, I present these pains and vulnerabilities in a more concrete manner.

My independent video game MeMoMi (2022) tells the story of a girl exploring her own body, which is full of disease and problems. Players must make conflicting and even cruel choices, reflecting on the complexity of their emotions, and these choices will lead to different endings of the girl. The central themes of self-healing and self-love are woven into the gaming fabric of my pieces, inviting viewers and players alike to explore these ideas in a playful and immersive way.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
In recent years of artistic practice, I have aimed to make video games my primary creative medium.

Although I have no programming background, in the past two years, I have used a simple engine to complete two games, MeMoMi (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2094760/MeMoMi/) and Colored-In Afternoon (https://emi-sun.itch.io/colored-in-afternoon), and released them on game platforms steam and itch.io.

The feedback from players are really positive, however, the limitations of the engines prevent me from fully realizing all my ideas. Also, it brought promotional challenges, such as the inability to release on platforms other than Windows; translators couldn’t translate from transformed files, etc. I am eager to collaborate with programmers who can help overcome these limitations.

Currently, I am all in self-promotion. I am particularly interested in collaborations with indie game publishers. If I’m able to get to know more creators and audience/players through publishers, it will be of great help to my creation.

Contact Info:

• Website: emisun.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emisun_yining/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emi-yining-sun-61489b205/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@emiy.sungame2532
• Other: https://emi-sun.itch.io/

Image Credits
Aaron Mark, Joyce Liang, Esther Du, Sophie Ng, Ashling Tu, Joy Li, Harry Hou, Zhi Li; Christopher Hall, Wenyi Su