Bluebird, Beijing (2025)

This is a very simple and poetic work of mine, which I am showing here for the first time. One could describe it as a series of documentary shots that I subsequently edited to achieve the desired image structure and color scheme. The images show a woman executing a series of simple movements among the parked cars in a Beijing parking lot, moving primarily around her own rotational axis. She remains more or less in one place, and only her outstretched arms create movement in the space. One might think she is dancing. But there was no music to be heard, only the usual street noise—the footsteps of passersby, snatches of conversation, the obligatory honking of car horns. No one else was watching her except me. She was doing something more to herself, so to speak. Nonetheless I saw it, I perceived it, and photographed it. And these images have stayed with me ever since. They give me strength, they touch and calm me. Her body and her actions do not collide with the environment. She does not change it, but rather opposes it. Something light, unspectacular, but very powerful. By resisting purpose, function, and a certain order, her interaction with the space suggests another possibility of being. Her resistance has no political intentions. It is purely human and, precisely for that reason, highly political for me. She measures an activity precisely according to the dimensions of a human body, thus erecting an inconspicuous monument to it, devoid of any heroism, but with everyday charm—a blue blouse, a black-and-white patterned skirt, and quite simple strappy sandals. Her body, though not exactly petite, appears very vulnerable and delicate. Her movements are very elegant, without losing power and self-determination. A very quiet revolution that draws its strength from the protagonist's fragility. She, or what she does, doesn't quite fit into her surroundings, but somehow they harmonize and together form a unity. Like the rule and its exception. That's why I chose graph paper as a background; for me, it brings a certain kind of precision, order, and anonymity, but at the same time, it lends the overall image a light, very delicate coloration that is difficult to perceive from a distance. The two missing images, like any interruption, introduce a certain tension into the composition. They set new accents, much like ellipses in rhetoric. I place much more value on an unfinished sentence than on one that ends with an exclamation mark.