Yaqi

Artist Bio

Su Yaqi (b. 2002) is a normal girl with a deep love for writing, baking, and gardening, and is currently doing her best in the abyss of academics. Yaqi often finds inspiration while spacing out under trees by the sea, ideally with something to eat. She likes to believe that wrapping Woolf with waffle, blending Barthes with butter and brewing Benjamin with bubble tea are perfectly valid methods of thinking. Her ongoing dissertation explores how, as bodies of water, we move like tides and pulse with a shared heartbeat through literary rhythms in postcolonial literature — though she’s also trying to remember to drink more actual water every day :)

Dust in Bloom

Artwork Description

Dust in Bloom is a post-pandemic assemblage of no-longer-worn denim and medical non-woven fabric — a cool-toned, makeshift version of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. These materials, once pressed close to the skin, are now stitched into a quiet bloom. The creator admits it’s a rough work, not meant to converse with art history or chase immortality. Rather, it remembers: a pair of jeans once worn, a mask once breathed through. Fragments of the everyday, cut and reassembled, bearing the warmth, pressure, and residue of survival. It asks — softly — what lingers after protection fades, and what it means to bloom, even briefly, in breath.