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Yafei Qi

Life tells lies

Vidéo expérimentale | 4k | noir et blanc | 11:4 | Chine | 2017

The work focus on the social status of women and the wave of feminism raised in contemporary China in recent years. it discusses the conflict between the traditional ideas, the women that carried on from generation to generation and the contemporary feminism among young women. It were done with Yafei`s family members, filmed in the apartment where her parents lived. All the plots in the video are adapted from her observation of her grandma and mum's real life, and the imagination of her own future. Yafei is trying to weave an seemingly conforming woman's life to the social expectations.

Yafei Qi is a performance- & video-artist with a background in filmmaking and painting based in Berlin. Her work examines the clashes between cultural norms & traditional values and the mindset of a globalising Chinese society. Yafei received her BA in Film- and Video-Art at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and graduated with a MFA from Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHIB) in 2016. In 2015, she spent six months at Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Her 2016 piece "Wearing the Fog" has been selected by various international films festivals and won - amongst other awards - "Best Experimental Film" at "The Broadway Film Festival" in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, her performances "Life Tells Lies" and "I wonder why", as well as the resulting video-works, received international acclaim. Since then, Yafei has had museum exhibitions in Bergen, Shenzhen & Beijing.