Haozhen Feng and Zairan Yu | She Swims in Silence

“Caught by the Tides” uses family history and micro-narratives to subvert grand historical narratives, specifically the large-scale migration period in Xinjiang during the early People’s Republic of China. During this era, under policy calls and vigorous women’s liberation movements, numerous young women supported the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Artist Haozhen Feng’s grandmother was among this extensive group. The rushing nets of the assembly line and the roaring machinery together formed the tides of an era, submerging the identities and voices of these female migrants.

The artists metaphorically repurpose fishing nets—a tool for capture—to a means to weave truth and fiction, encouraging speculative imaginings of how women’s lives have been historically constrained and suppressed by cultural and social expectations. Suspended mirrors symbolize women’s continuous reflection upon their bodies and identities, endlessly refracted through societal expectations and external validations.

This piece merges female portraits, historical footage, documentary clips, pop culture excerpts, and mythological imagery into a fluid collage, washing over the viewer like floods of memory.

Generations of women emerge and vanish, from legendary goddesses to modern pop icons, swimming through the same turbulent historical currents, forming a parallel narrative. The artists invite viewers to witness how individual and collective histories intertwine. The result is both documentary and poetic—a visual poem about transformation and resilience. Viewers become witnesses to the liquefaction of time itself, and identity continuously reshapes like water.

In a dimly lit corner, a dressing table forms the core of the installation, hinting at an unresolved performance. Brief flashes of video light intermingle with your reflection. Vintage stage props—a painted wave from a bygone opera scene—are intertwined.

You can imagine a vanished actress who once stood here, embodying a fish goddess or revolutionary heroine. This dressing table places you simultaneously as a viewer and a missing participant, reflecting on the absence of female stories in myth and history within an empty stage. The emotional tone is one of longing and possibility, inviting you to imagine new narratives to fill this void.

Rainbow trout farming in Xinjiang started in the 1970s, initially in the Ili River region. Rainbow trout were introduced to China in 1959 as a diplomatic gift from North Korea.

Participants take the humorous, absurd role of a salmon egg (or female salmon) traveling upstream from North Korea, accompanied by sounds of various transportation modes, eventually reaching Ili in western China, completing this 3,000-kilometer journey.

Artists use rainbow trout as metaphors for women who similarly journeyed thousands of miles to Xinjiang during the same period. The experience unfolds spaces and hidden sounds from this historical moment, allowing viewers to become digital avatars flowing fluidly through historical gaps.

Haozhen Feng (SMACT ’25) and Zairan Yu create installation, short film and cross-media interactive works inspired by historical events, documentaries, art history, music videos, and mythologies, exploring constructions of history, mythical narratives, and identity multiplicities.

Haozhen Feng is an interdisciplinary artist extensively using digital media like game engines and interactive technologies, focusing on how technological mediums intervene in climate crises and geopolitics to promote critical art practices.

Zairan Yu, an artist and dancer, explores fluidities of body, time, memory, and emotion, navigating technology and aesthetics, using interdisciplinary dialogues to reawaken audience perceptions of time.

In 2024, Yu Zairan and Feng Haozhen founded Relight Creative, a media art studio in Beijing, and currently they conduct interdisciplinary artistic research in Boston, USA.

Acknowledgments

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my family and my partner Zairan for their unwavering support throughout this journey. I am deeply thankful to my thesis advisors, Professor Gediminas Urbonas, Professor Judith Barry, and Professor Nida Sinnokrot, for their invaluable guidance and encouragement during the preparation and realization of this exhibition. I also wish to express my sincere appreciation to all colleagues and staff at the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program at MIT. Their patience, technical assistance, and financial support have been instrumental in bringing this exhibition to fruition.
-Haozhen Feng（SMACT ’25)