Lucid Dreams CH V by Jiazi Yin

My work traces the themes of migration, psychology, and displacement, exploring how journeys—whether chosen or forced—reshape both landscapes and the inner terrain of the self. Memory threads through these work like a layered, shifting map, charting emotional geographies and holding fragments of lives in transition. Abstract maps appear as guides through dislocation, while color becomes a vital language, evoking place and mood and marking invisible boundaries between loss and belonging. Alongside this, I explore interpersonal relationships, tracing the fragile bonds and shifting connections that emerge amid movement, absence, and return. Lucid Dreams is a body of work that explores my shared experiences of migration and the psychological impact of navigating two distinct cultures. I use landscapes as a vehicle, intertwining personal experience with the natural scenery of both the United States and China. Through cyanotype print collages, I articulate the psychological struggles and forms of violence that can arise from displacement, with the act of tearing serving as a metaphor for this tension. The choice of cyanotype is deliberate, evoking the ephemeral and shifting nature of life and memory. In this work, I seek to understand and convey the layered meanings of landscape, and to locate my own position between these two worlds of place and culture. Printmaking is deeply rooted in my cyanotype collage work, both technically and conceptually. In my collage practice, I treat images and negatives as matrices, building layered compositions while adjusting variables such as exposure time, opacity, and material. Through this process, I navigate the balance between control and unpredictability. Each piece becomes a monoprint: although it is created through reproducible tools and processes, the final result is singular. This reflects the essence of monoprinting, where repetition and uniqueness coexist. While the work may appear photographic or painterly, its underlying approach is distinctly print-based—modular, experimental, and grounded in repetition and process. Conceptually, printmaking has shaped how I think about originality, variation, and time. Cyanotypes are theoretically reproducible, yet each print is unique, influenced by exposure time, weather conditions, and manual intervention. I am drawn to this tension between precision and chance, reproducibility and impermanence. Printmaking also connects my practice to broader histories of archiving, science, and cultural memory. Cyanotypes evoke blueprints, maps, and photographic records, while printmaking carries a long history of dissemination and preservation. These associations allow me to explore fragility, memory, impermanence, and visibility. There is a quiet power in using a reproducible process to create something ephemeral, layered, and intimate. Ultimately, printmaking is more than a technique in my practice—it is a way of seeing, building, and questioning the image.