Cristea Nian Zhao

Next Travel will be to see you Again

28

July 2022

28

Jul

2022

19

Aug 2022

Gallery 1

Next Travel will be to see you Again

Cristea Nian Zhao

28

July 2022

28

July

2022

19

August 2022

Gallery 1

Next Travel will be to see you Again’ is a video installation seeking to destabilise the authority of autobiographical narrative through reintroducing its own diegetic narration. This is not my love story, the same way the letter couldn’t be correctly interpreted and the trip couldn’t be further proceeded. It generates its own life and it thrives in it.At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, I received an illegible letter from my soon-to-be ex-partner, promising a trip together to Vietnam. The country suspended issuing visas to Chinese citizens at the time after my flights were booked. This relationship was soon doomed, with a letter unable to be read, and a trip unable to be made.‘Next Travel will be to see you Again’ intends to generate its own narrative space beyond this autobiographical story through the manipulation (erasure, addendum and appropriation) of the original letter and a fake travel Vlog that was shot in front of a blue screen. It aims to dissolve the mechanism where the authenticity of an autobiographical text/narrative is inherently validated through the reference and identity of its author. The distinction of fact and fiction, reality and virtuality, genuineness and fake thus no longer exists. The blurred boundaries manifest a moment of relaxation and freedom in between two fixed, structurally opposed binaries.

Next Travel will be to see you Again’ is a video installation seeking to destabilise the authority of autobiographical narrative through reintroducing its own diegetic narration. This is not my love story, the same way the letter couldn’t be correctly interpreted and the trip couldn’t be further proceeded. It generates its own life and it thrives in it.At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, I received an illegible letter from my soon-to-be ex-partner, promising a trip together to Vietnam. The country suspended issuing visas to Chinese citizens at the time after my flights were booked. This relationship was soon doomed, with a letter unable to be read, and a trip unable to be made.‘Next Travel will be to see you Again’ intends to generate its own narrative space beyond this autobiographical story through the manipulation (erasure, addendum and appropriation) of the original letter and a fake travel Vlog that was shot in front of a blue screen. It aims to dissolve the mechanism where the authenticity of an autobiographical text/narrative is inherently validated through the reference and identity of its author. The distinction of fact and fiction, reality and virtuality, genuineness and fake thus no longer exists. The blurred boundaries manifest a moment of relaxation and freedom in between two fixed, structurally opposed binaries.

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Cristea Nian Zhao

Cristea Nian Zhao comes from a background in film. She has written and directed several narrative short films and documentaries. Since immigrating to Australia in 2018, her practice has expanded into performance, video installation and text-based work. Language, spoken narrative and shared listening are crucial to her practice. Her interest is in unearthing various forms of loss from personal history and collective memory