Today we’d like to introduce you to LingYan.
Hi LingYan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Seeing art as a powerful post-structuralist vessel, I left my career in tech behind and is determined to achieve my artistic vision as a writer and a filmmaker. I stand at the intersection of the discourses on queerness, feminism, the immigrant experience, pain, and family trauma. I’d love to use my words and lens to transport people into a liminal space where refuge from the uncanny irresolvable of an information-oversaturated modern age can be found.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No. It never has, and it will never be, for everyone. I struggle with many things, but mostly myself. Sometimes people say to be a creator is not about to find yourself but to find your audience. Yet for me personally, I find it difficult to do so without finding myself somewhere in-between during the process. I wrestle with myself whenever I need to.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Good question. I’d say I am most proud that I’m always in search of my language and my written/visual narrative for my works. Looking back, I think it might be an engineer’s mentality. I think of art more as a form of building, like a jigsaw puzzle, where I piece together lines and frames of information to form a vision that I’ve been longing for. Currently, I am exploring the concept of liminal spaces in both my writing and directing work, and I’m prepared to delve into it for the next few years, along with my long-time interest in the discussion of nationality, identity, Asian family relations, childhoods, and the chaos/magical realism of modern life. My journey wasn’t easy. The community I grew up in despised art as a fraud. It was hard to believe in these things when stressing about food and a place to live. My parents and I moved frequently, and to this day, I’ve never had a strong sense of home, nor have I ever decorated my rooms. But that’s also why I connect a lot more with my people and communities over actual physical places. So, during my years of self-reflection, in my attempt to recollect my early memories to better understand myself, I stumbled upon a particular incident and decided to document it—a story about how a tiny apartment my family used to inhabit in China was accidentally burned down during my elementary school years. My family had a hard time, even though, at that time, I didn’t fully grasp the gravity of our situation. But yeah, here’s an excerpt from that story which I believe will help explain both myself and my work better: It happened in the middle of the day. All residents were out working. The only witnesses were the family and a small Tai Chi group of retired people. One of them thought his Qi had worked, as he believed he had summoned the fire. The glares. The flames. The blaze. The anger and the miracle. He was positive, for that grand moment, hearing his heart pounding more solemnly than ever, that he’d soon get invited to the National TV to present his Qi to his dear motherland and to restore her glory. The same moment had declared its passing when he saw the family with paper money in their hands and tears in their eyes, through his own tears. He watched the father sigh in the raging smoke. He couldn’t really tell if it was a sigh. He saw the father’s lips hanging open, just one thin line, letting out a curse, maybe, then it must be a soundless curse. But if it was, in fact, a sigh, it was a long sigh, lasting longer than the actual fire itself and had vanished into rebar altogether when the fire department arrived.
What does success mean to you?
Money and fame. No, I’m joking. For me to be successful is to reach a self-consistency, to support and to be supported, and, at last, to be happy.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/llllingyan/
Image Credits
Tom Zhou
EJ Yeh
