Danning Niu | 2020 | Interior Architecture & East Asian Studies

I Want to Find Li Bai and His White Deer

Paper board

An ode to my favorite ancient Chinese poet Li Bai, the piece draws inspiration from the poem 梦游天姥吟留别. It is a poem that bears my nostalgia, that often reminds me of my teenage time in China when my friends went on odysseys like what the poet did in the past. On the road, we recited and wrote poems. At an age when many of us had not found own words, the poems became our euphemisms that carry our ideals, insecurities, and recklessness. The imagined space embodies that experience, creating a landscape for a continuous voyage. While the architectural structure becomes a monument of the past, it rejects self-containment and rejuvenates itself by inviting the audience to new voyages and the creation or new memories.

from Re: Memory, Granoff Center for the Arts, January 17 - February 13, 2017