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. 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 at Phase B Undergraduate Students Exhibition, “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.

Life of Hopscotch

By He Siqi, School of City Design

Stemmed from an unintentional body movement that awakened my deep memories of childhood, the game “hopscotch” works as the lead for my graduation work. The joyful time that I jumped barefoot and squared off the ground was in stark contrast to the fast-paced, high-pressure life that we experience today. I began to realize that this simple and ritualistic play actually carries a primitive and real “cognitive experience”. In jumping, we choose squares, make a balance, move forward, pause, and turn back... in a sense, isn’t it just like the states that we need to make choices when facing the various stages of life? So “hopscotch” is the entrance I have provided, and with the help of its childlike but philosophical structure, I have developed an immersive narrative design about different dimensions of life. This creation is not only a nostalgic retrospective, but also an experiment to convey my contemporary expression with the help of folk games.

The Creative Process

My work “Life of Hopscotch” is structured in the form of “hopscotch”, with a total of seven dimensions that symbolize different stages of life and psychological states: dream, failure, desire, time, emotion, creation, and individual. Each dimension forms an independent and interrelated experience space through figurative images, text gifts, color atmospheres, and sound effects, and they are connected into a narrative path about growth and self-awareness.

The Exhibition View of Life of Hopscotch

I designed an interactive installation of “hopscotch” on ground. When a viewer jumps directly onto it, he or she completes the psychological journey from childhood to adulthood through jumping. In each square, the spectator can trigger sound effects and visual images, making the jump a medium that connects the body with memories, emotions and thoughts, which enables an active and participatory immersive experience.

The Exhibition View of Life of Hopscotch

I hope that visitors will have emotional “resonance” in jumping, and re-understand themselves from one square after another:

They may feel elevated in dreams, shattered in failures, struggling in desires, contemplating in time, and they may even feel gentle in emotion, released in creation, so that they redefine themselves in the process.

It is not only a revisit of childhood game, but also a mental journey and a contemporary expression.

I hope that when visitors leave, they will not only remember the fun of this installation on ground, but also remember the image vision that touches them in a certain square, some memory awakened by a certain melody, or a certain action to re-understand themselves.

I hope that my work can bring a “jumping” cognitive transformation either back to childhood or into the future.

The Installation Process

This way of “perceiving life with the body” is actually a response to the current reality. I want to break the alienation between us and ourselves through jumping. When everyone jumps onto this installation, they must measure the dimension of life with their own bodies, which is an irreplaceable immersive experience and a ritual of returning to instinct. I want to make people aware that the body is not an accessory to expression, but is itself the bearer of emotions, memories and cognition, and the most primitive and real connection between us and the world.

He Siqi introduced her work to visitors.

If my creation in this year is a journey of chasing the light, then the “light” that supports me to keep moving forward is actually the childlike innocence that I am always unwilling to give up and my pursuit of ego. This “light” makes me believe that creation is far more than techniques of expression, but also a response to life. Even in the era of information explosion, I still hope that through squares and jumping, we can return to our bodies and be ourselves. This persistence is the reason that I am chasing the light.

The Portrait of He Siqi

Courtesy of He Siqi, edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO.