Yanyi Xie (b.1997, Chengdu, China) is a documentary filmmaker and visual artist based in Chicago, IL. Yanyi holds a BS degree in Media and Cinema Studies from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently pursuing MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern University.
Yanyi’s works focus on topics of gender and cultural identities, some inspired from personal experience. She aims to document individuals’ experience, relations, and emotions through image-making, to emphasize the power of personal within broader social/cultural context.
Artist Statement
Being a “resident alien” for almost a third of my life, my practice has allowed me to observe and build connections in a society that is different from my own while simultaneously in a marginalized position in society. Over the years, I looked through the camera lens to understand and document the unfamiliar world with curiosity and care. Documentary is the most direct format for me. Now I see camera as an extension of myself, my eyes as I see the world, my hands as I sculpt the “reality” into the frame limits. The process of documentary making leads me to appreciate the power of the mundane and personal things in life. Camera transcribes the happenings, and human connections and emotions in colors and lights in the viewfinder. And then I add the social and cultural context later to shape the representation of life into a film through editing.
The observations from documentary practice have trained me to see everyday objects and events. My fictional and experimental filmmaking also focuses on that, finding stories in the mundane nuisances. My work centers around gender topics, feminism in mainland China, womanhood, and queer community, many of which inspired by my personal experience.
Contact
email: yanyixie2020@gmail.com