Chun Hua Catherine Dong at Time Square, NY

08/01/2024

A video-based work created through virtual reality, Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s Mulan reimagines the legendary Chinese folk heroine of the same name to explore gender and the plasticity and plurality of the body.

Inspired by ancient Chinese storytelling, performance traditions, and marine biology, Dong used 3D VR tools to create an imaginary aquatic fantasy world where Mulan disguises her identity and gender, in order to coexist and become one with the nudibranch — a colorful deep-sea organism with striking forms, unique defenses, and ambiguous gender identities.

Ultimately Mulan becomes not only a hybrid being, but a part of the surrounding marine ecosystems. Donning the protagonist in a colorful Beijing Opera costume and staging her on the rainbow-hued nudibranch, Dong proposes the pluralities within this folk character, and challenges historically male-dominated theater traditions.

“Through performative gestures and expressions, I re-interpret Mulan from a feminist perspective. This work also raises questions about the binary system, about how to merge the boundaries of self/other, culture/nature, and human/animal, creating a new social relation that supports different ways of living and diverse beings in order to sustain and survive.” — Chun Hua Catherine Dong

Mulan was created in collaboration with Kudo Albus, a digital artist in Shanghai.