Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s “Sun and Life”, my piece explores how women’s reproductive experiences are profoundly shaped by their political and cultural contexts—in this case, historical China. I aim to capture the complex tension between the vitality of new life and the visceral, often cruel, realities of pregnancy. This duality leads to my first metaphor: the pistil, the essential female organ of a flower. Like the women I wish to portray, the pistil embodies both the life-giving potential and a functional purpose, implying the intricate and demanding process of childbearing. From the pistil, life then bursts and unfolds into a body. I have chosen the colour red to string together this process, alluding to both the physical composition of a human body and the omnipresent force in the Chinese political scene—the Chinese Communist Party, whose policy-making is once a decisive factor in shaping women’s reproductive experiences. Thus, a body born within such a rigidly structured society and subject to complex societal forces(state-mandated abortion) from the very beginning is fated to be fragmented. It is destined to come with an incongruity between mind and form. The three-line poem, thus, concludes with “a scattered body” to form a complete narrative.

The video aims to visualise this conceptual process. A blend of archival footage and computer-generated effects is employed to give a sense of alienation, which resonates with state-controlled reproduction when the functional purpose of women’s bodies is prioritised over everything else. These are animated through Adobe Animate. The flower's bloom and the body unfurling from the pistil are realised by frame-by-frame, hand-drawn animation. Some of the visions could not be realised due to my current level of mastery of the digital tools. So, some compromises were made. For example, I failed to form the words with the smoke from the candles as originally planned. For the following projects, I wish to put more focus on the potential interactions between words and images.