Editor’s note: Themed on “Chasing the Light”, 2025 CAFA Graduation Season kicked off at CAFA Art Museum in early summer. Surrounded by diversified creations, visitors may find that some of graduates chose performance to burst their inner impulses, some chose to interact with the space to build their visual tension, and some got inspired from traditions to bring about more contemporary creative appearances. More young creators are paying their attention to drawing materials from the life around them, trying to capture the multiple realities of emotions, experiences and thoughts...
In these cases, the collisions between individual experience and the external world, between new and old media, as well as between virtual life and real life have repeatedly inspired their creativity that may not be perfect but fresh. In the poster of 2025 CAFA Graduation Season, a symbolic apple is outlined in a constantly changing form under the illumination of light. CAFA graduates who believe in “light”, follow the light in their hearts and present their initial explorations of “what art is” that have been honed for several years at their degree shows. Featuring interviews with graduates, “CAFA Graduates Who Believe in ‘Light’”, invites graduates to talk about their creative stories from a more microscopic and in-depth perspective, and we would like to share and convey the “light” in the hearts of young people through these candid and vivid narrations.
Empty Image
By Yan Wenhao, Department of Sculpture
I once had an empathy on a bubble, therefore I started taking several portraits of the bubbles, and I have tried to extend the expressive dimension of my work and connect it with the general feelings of people at the moment. It was slowly developed from an image creation to an installation. Initially, I wanted to construct two scenes, which are closely related to our lives, and then I used bubbles to create group portraits in the scenes. These two groups of portraits describe a state of existence.
Exhibition View of Empty Image by Yan Wenhao
Detail of Empty Image
“Empty Image” includes two parts: The first part is an exhibition hall, with the three goddesses of fate in the middle, surrounded by visitors. The whole exhibition hall is upside down, and the image is flipped on the TV through the camera; The second part is an elevator, when visitors press the button to trigger the elevator, it will open and produce bubbles to complete the shaping of a group portrait. Both of them constitute a theater, which has a realistic side and an illusory side, just like our real life, profound and absurd.
Details of Empty Image
The elevator is like a miniature city, and is the city itself also like a giant machine that ever keeps moving? We are caught up in it and we cannot stop. The elevator serves as a carrier for me to capture this collective portrait of contemporary life: it reminds visitors that this is not a story of others, but about the present for each of us.
The Creative Process of Empty Image
The Installation Process of Empty Image
I added an interactive device to my work: every time a visitor presses the button, the floor number accumulates. Just like the elevator in reality cannot go backwards, this rising number also symbolizes the irreversible nature of the era as we can only move forward and we cannot turn back.
Exhibition View of Empty Image
“Light” may mean different for everyone. For me, it is both a direction and a metaphor for self-exploration. Over the years, my creations have continued to expand, from material experiments to conceptual expressions, from individual emotions to observations of the era. Every step of my journey is like chasing an unknown beam of light, even though it is not fixed or clear, it always guides me forward. Fortunately, I chose art as my medium to express and communicate. It taught me to speak with my works, and it also confirmed my belief through feedback from the audience that creation is more than a personal exploration and it can also be a transmission of resonance. Chasing the light, perhaps the light itself is not important, what is important is that we are always on the road of pursuit.
Portrait of Yan WenhaoText and Image Courtesy of Yan Wenhao, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.
