“Fissure of a Sweetdream” is a series talking about where the shadow of reality hides between the shiny dream.
Jialin Yan documented a group of young people living in Wanning, Hainan. These young people are rebels against the mainstream adult life. They go deep into the ocean with their surfboards, far away from the noise and constrained code of the city, while experiencing a very divergent rhythm of life. They are filled with vitality, restlessness, and brightness both physically and mentally.
Through the series of images, in which a naturalistic and hippie spirit integrated, it is clear to see the original inspiration from the ocean and the forest for people living with. The group built their own biological clock to freely live at the moment by exploring and enjoy the nature even it looks like they were letting go of adulthood responsibility. Moreover, the photographs taken from dawn to dusk, which demonstrate a sense of mercy and healing, bring the mysterious and melancholic atmosphere for audiences. As the last part of this exhibition, the night-fall video presents in poetic form with Jialin Yan's monologue. It will lead the audience gently sneak into the deep night with the back of a woman in the video.
When it comes to the core of this series, Jialin Yan concentrated more on individual emotional journey currently rather than researching in a way of fieldwork. To be more specific, she insisted that the sincere conversation was the premise of every shutter click consistently and consequently felt a projection of her own predicament through it. Besides, many people from the group were gazing at the camera when their desire are explicitly captured by the lens. That it is why the audience are easily touched by delicate flows of every private emotion once they get close to the detail of each piece of work. Generally, these flows are caught in the “fissure” of conversations, which consist of the short pauses occurred in the conversation between Jialin Yan and the person in her photo. A sense of alienation and absence result in a real flow, although the camera interfered direct eye contact from the photographer to the photographed people.
Due to the reason that people have adjusted to the island life with soaring cost of living caused by the rapid growth of tourism, one idea came up to them that their imaginary utopia has gradually fading and it was more likely to become a sort of self-fulfilling illusion. As a matter of fact, some began to doubt the authenticity of this “sweet dream” and take a break from it. People, like this group, come and go instead of gaining a sense of belonging to the land afterwards after this promising land had used to carrying the expectations among them. For the meantime, the boundaries between reality and illusion become loosen, they came, left and finally became a sort of representative metaphor of utopia.
Back to the exhibition, an installation of a swing, which is facing the entrance, is set right upon the wallpaper of a green pool. In addition, there is a rattan bed for audience in the middle of the venue to simulate of the situation when people wake up interrupted from "Fissure of a Sweetdream". Their pleasure and comfort might be accidentally intervened by the inevitably consequent anxiety as the uncertainty of reality gradually surge into the forefront of their mind. As Baudrillard's discussion of modernity, the carnival of freedom is a painful correction of modernity, which is inevitably contradictory. (1)
Text by Xiao Ruiyun
Note
（1）Le Paroxyste indifférent. Entretiens avec Philippe Petit, a interview with a contemporary philosopher Jean Paudrillard and French journalists Philippe Pelit.
（1）Le Paroxyste indifférent. Entretiens avec Philippe Petit, a interview with a contemporary philosopher Jean Paudrillard and French journalists Philippe Pelit.