The Misfits is a photograph project with AR component that explores issues of gender and culture in Chinese mythical creatures: dragon and phoenix. Deeply rooted in Chinese tradition, the dragon and phoenix have been interconnected symbols: Yan and Yin, male and female, masculine and feminine. The two are often used together as a representation of auspiciousness and blissful relations between husband and wife and happy marriage. The phoenix and the dragon were two powerful creatures. In early Chinese myth, the phoenix was a union of male and female called Feng Huang, Feng was male bird, and Huang was female bird. However, as the dragon became associated with ancient Chinese emperors as an imperial symbol, the phoenix was made into representing a female-only identity to pair with the dragon. “The Misfits” is inspired by Chinese textile. In this work, the phoenix and the dragon are depicted not as opposites but as mirrors of each other. Adding my own twist to a traditional medium by placing these symbols within the rainbow sea and mountain patterns, I intend to re-interpret the Chinese mythical creatures from a feminist perspective, offering a contemporary reading on Chinese tradition. Each photograph has a one-minute animated graphics that is accessed through AR. AR is used to enhance viewers’ experience of photograph and makes static photographs alive and architectural. This new form of photograph merges still images/moving images, virtual/actual, creating a performative way for audiences to engage with photographs. Everyone can access the AR component as long as one has a cellphone and downloads a free app on one’s phone, when one opens the app and points toward a photograph, an animated video will appear on one’s phone screen, sound will be activated too. Please see the AR at 2:03 in the video above, or visit the a link here to see a demo.

Animation: Chun Hua Catherine Dong

Sound: Shane Turner

I Have Been There (2015- present) is an on-going public intervention performance that explores belonging, diaspora, and existence in public spaces. Each time Chun Hua Catherine Dong travels to a new place, Dong creates a duvet with Chinese traditional embroidered silk fabric. Covered by the duvet, Dong lies on the ground in front of historical sites, landmarks, tourist attractions, and other significant places or events around the world. Dong repeats this performance as a poetic expression of their diasporic identity and engagement with different cultures and spaces. Working within the gap between body as image and body as experienced reality, Dong uses their body as a primary material in their work, creating visual narratives that enable audiences to experience performance unexpectedly and directly in public spaces. Dong started this performance in 2015, and has performed in 15 countries, 36 cities, and over 300 different sites. Dong recently brings this performance to VR so that audiences can experience it in virtual spaces.

Skin Deep” is a series of photograph with Augmented Reality component that explores surface of thing–face-in relation Asian shame culture through performing self-portraits.

Chinese shame is rooted on the concept of face. Shame is used as a tool of social control and harmony, as a way to prevent citizens—especially women—from acting in ways that might disrupt the status quo. In Skin Deep, I translate the word “shame” to a cultural symbol and create a series of ID -card photographs by concealing my face in Chinese symbolic silk fabrics. The act of masking is a performance of submission to the powerful effects of shame in which I obliterate my own individuality while being completely absorbed into a cultural identity. It refers both the quality of only being seen for my Chinese background as an immigrant in Canada, and the subsequent lack of acknowledgement of my full personhood as a girl when in China. “Skin Deep” is an act of drawing back the curtain and pointing to the deeply embedded feelings of shame that can cause women to hold back and stay silent, transforming the performative gestures into experiences that are understood to be universal and relatable.