INSTITUTE: Rhode Island School of Design
YEAR: 2022
LANGUAGE: Chinese
SYNOPSIS: Spring 1976, 5-year-old Swallow is abandoned at a public boarding preschool in central Beijing. When the persimmons are ripe, Swallow masters how to cry, but doesn’t forget how to fly.
PROFILE: Mochi Lin is a filmmaker, animator, and musician, recently graduated with a BFA in Film and Animation from Rhode Island School of Design.
Mochi grew up looking up at the green roof tiles around her neighbourhood, running between the red city walls of imperial Beijing. However, when she fled to Canada in 2015, looking down through the tiny porthole, all she perceived was a city long shrouded with grey smog and yellow sandstorm.
Therefore, Mochi’s artworks are often concerned with the escape, the censorship, the oppression and resistance, the inability to express, and the irony of being physically free, yet still a prisoner.
