In Echo of the Enigmatic Nights, 2024–Ongoing
by Jialin Yan
In Echo of the Enigmatic Nights, 2024–Ongoing
wood, metal, fabric, photography, sound
Dimensions variable
“My practice begins with extensive fieldwork and archival research. Rooted in my upbringing in a southern coastal city of China, I explore how geography, memory, and female perspectives intertwine. Each project unfolds over months through iteration and material experimentation. Working across photography, sculpture, and installation, I follow intuition to create immersive spaces that reimagine overlooked histories.”
Jialin Yan (*1992) is a London-based Chinese photographer and visual artist whose work explores memory, loss, and emotional inheritance. Blending photography, sculpture, and installation, she transforms personal and collective histories into tactile, immersive environments. Rooted in her coastal upbringing in Southern China, Yan’s practice reimagines forgotten identities through poetic storytelling and material experimentation.
© Artwork courtesy of the artist
Monologue
I was born at sea. My parents, and their parents before them, were all born on boats. And rather than calling the boat my home, I would say that the waves were my lullaby, and the ocean, my true homeland.
The sea stretches boundless and vast, yet it has become my confinement, my boundary. In the world I live in, women on the water are told they must never set foot on land. “We belong to the sea. The shore is forbidden—a prison that ensnares.” My mother and grandmother often warned me. My fate, like theirs, was to drift and settle upon the waves, never to approach the place they called the dreadful land. Sometimes, their voices felt like the wind, whispering through the air, seeping into my bones. Yet, at dawn, I could never resist gazing toward the distant shore, shrouded in mist, wrapped in heavy legends. I did not know what it truly looked like, nor whether it was indeed the unreachable world they claimed it to be.
I thought about it for a long time. One day, I secretly picked up a pair of discarded shoes—shoes that once belonged to a woman from the shore. I waited for the right weather, and on a night when thick clouds veiled the moon completely, I carried the shoes and quietly slipped onto an abandoned boat drifting in the water. Under the cloak of darkness, I paddled toward the shore. That night, as I rowed through the hidden corridor of the night, I did not know if I would truly reach land—I dared not imagine it. But even if only for a fleeting moment, even if I could only steal a brief glimpse, I would be one step closer to touching the reality of the shore with my own hands. That was enough.
The sea wind lashed against my face, the waves murmuring in the dark, as if trying to dissuade me from this escape. Behind me, a faint sound echoed—I could not tell if someone had discovered my departure. But I dared not turnback. I gripped the oar tightly, pushing past one wave after another. Thump, thump. My heartbeat quickened with the boat’s trembling rhythm.
I rowed until exhaustion blurred time. Then suddenly, the boat struck against a rock. My eyes shot open. A faint light flickered ahead, illuminating the land. The world seemed to freeze in that moment, I had reached the continent I had longed for.
Standing on the damp shore, I looked down at the pair of shoes in my hands, my mind adrift. There was no surge of excitement as I had imagined countless times before. The shore was silent. And suddenly, I began to wonder—where was the true prison? In this moment, I felt like a bird that had broken free from its cage, overwhelmed by a newfound, unshackled joy. I hurried to put on the shoes, eager to run towards the trees beyond the shore. But something in my heart held me still. My body refused to move forward. Instead, my gaze kept drifting back—back toward the undulating waves.
I could not erase the image of the women like me, drifting across the sea, their eyes fixed upon the shore, their voices echoing with curiosity, yet never drawing near.
A wave of guilt crashed over me—this escape had happened on a stolen boat, a vessel that was never mine to claim. Could I truly reach freedom like this? Had I taken a path that was not my own?
I sat on the shore, lost in thought. Time slipped away unnoticed. The thick clouds above were slowly swept apart, unveiling a full moon, luminous and whole. Its cool glow cascaded down, casting my solitary shadow upon the tide.
I returned to the boat, gently guiding it back to the sea. As the water rocked beneath me, my heart grew calm.
Gazing upon the moon’s radiant form, I made a resolute wish:
From this night forward, I would become a boat. A vessel that sails in the dark, carrying women like me—women who long to reach the shore. I would listen to their hearts in the stillness of the night, gliding beside their drifting boats, wordlessly ferrying them forward.
Like a glimmer of light rising in the darkness, I would guide them toward their own horizons…
Monologue Poems (Selected)
1.
All my world is this little boat,
Called home,
Drifting in harmony with the surrounding sea.
Here I was born,
Here I grew,
Here I first glimpsed the so-called "land."
The elder women speak in whispers of its mysteries,
Of forbidden shores they may never tread,
Of rules etched deep into silence—taboo.
What, then, truly is the land?
Is it merely another canoe, grander still?
What, then, truly is taboo?
Is it not another canoe, grander still?
2.
People praise the freedom of sky and sea;
People condemn the chains from the land.
Yet I feel the sea is a prison without end,
And on that narrow shore alone,
Exists my smallest, yet greatest, freedom.