Artist’s Statement:
I took a photograph in the swimming pool where I once drowned, the place where I once
dieted, and the land where the Chinese female medics once shaved. Scanning, I cut a piece of
hair, a piece of myself.
In my ongoing self-portrait series titled Tales of Three Lands, I unravel Chinese female
identities, diet culture, and social media isolations by resituating myself in various settings.
From droning, dieting, scanning, and alternatively cutting, I regard those photos as a process
of searching through my identities. From frame to frame, I feel empowered as I wrap pieces
of my personality to every Image I make, as if in this way I could sew the imagined lands of
my consciousness into a tale of its own.
– Sijia Ma
