Silkworm Pupas (Jin Jin Xu and Jiaoyang Li)

In America, You Are Asked, Why Are Leaves Green?

“Immigrant artists constantly betray their sources. With tongues silenced by our homeland, what can we say in America？On the internet? How can we tell our stories to an inherently foreign audience—must we be consumed by the American gaze? Must we eat off American palms to be seen?” - Silkworm Pupas. In America, You Are Asked Why Are Leaves Green? is a video-performance showcased in an online VR installation. Within a ghostly silk forest, a world within worlds, the labor of Chinese factory workers and silkworms are evoked through a satiric reimagining of the Chinese mythology of the Silk-Worm Horse. Surveilled by hovering avatar audience members, who can enter the installation frame, the artist-duo appear in their cyborg embodiments and mirror each other as they uncannily merge into one. The work questions censorship, self-censorship, orientalization, and self-orientalization within the context of global late capitalism.

Jin Jin Xu’s website
Jin Jin Xu’s instagram

Jiaoyang Li’s website
Jiaoyang Li’s instagram

*This performance took place on November 15th 2020