Shaanxi shadow puppetry, featured in 22-year-old artist and writer Min Jia’s two graphite drawings — Falling Goose and Flying Goose and White Peacock and White Peacock’s Shadow, is a more readily recognizable traditional Chinese folk art form at the triennial. The artist portrayed the geese and peacocks in an anthropomorphic manner by giving them limbs, and highlighted their joints with gears, making them look like maneuverable shadow puppets.

Min Jia, who was born in Xinjiang and raised overseas, can hardly speak Chinese but has developed a fascination with shadow puppetry, partly because they suffer from fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder, according to Rao. The artist sees the portrayal of human anatomy in shadow puppetry as a mirror of Chinese people’s view of the universe and the acupuncture points on the human body, which has expanded their visual understanding of mutation.

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