arrived in New York by way of Nanjing, Auckland and Chicago. Having lived in four cities as a young painter, sometimes as a self-conscious outsider and other times in self-exile, Xingzi is acutely aware of the alienating forces of a life spent in constant motion.
GU: Yeah. For me, desire and queerness are interconnected. The character you mentioned is a vulnerable straight teenager. I feel like anything that seems intimate or tender or timid, that space for a tender moment can also be where things can go wrong if it’s not protected. In the film, the teenagers are all very vulnerable, but there are moments of violence because, in society, sometimes teenagers don’t have the proper tools to protect themselves or protect one another.
GU: I feel like there’s not a specific formula for me to choose what images I’m attracted to. Whatever images resonate with me, I use as a reference for the painting. Sometimes a friend from my hometown posts a photo on Instagram and I will be like, “That resonates.” But also, sometimes it’s people in New York. I find an image just walking down the street, or from a film I saw recently. I don’t want to put criteria for what images I choose, I want to keep it as open as possible.