Sijia Chao

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture)

I’ve always had this yearning to be elsewhere, a feeling of displacement, a sense that I shouldn’t be in Australia. Such feelings were recognised while reading the short story, Lemon, by Kajii Motojirō (梶井基次郎. The ‘enigmatic and ominous lump’ that troubled him also exists in me, but in a different form. In my work, the story is adapted into film so as not to lose the beauty of the text, with two TV screens placed next to each other playing in sync. The music and voice together create a beautiful daydream, transporting the audience to a facade in Japan, building up this feeling of melancholia – until the final blow.