©2025 Meiyi
THESIS
The topic of my Thesis project is about left-behind children in China. When I was young, many of my classmates and friends were left-behind children. Their parents left home to develop in big cities, leaving their children with their grandparents, and many of them lacked the love of their parents. As one of the left-behind children, I know that children need their parents' company more than financial assistance.
mixed medium
“Waiting” is a two-layer painting, the viewer looks at the painting from an indoor perspective, the first layer is a little boy sitting in front of the door waiting for someone, the upper layer is the wall inside the house. On the wall is the words the little boy wrote over and over again, the words are full of his expectation to see his parents. The inspiration for “Waiting” came from my habit of writing on the walls when I was a kid, and I’m sure a lot of people have done something similar when they were little.
mixed medium
22"x 18"
The colorful kites fly back towards the children, while the black and white kites fly farther and farther away, symbolizing that most of the children’s parents are far away, busy with work, and only a few of the children wait until their parents return home. This also reflects the situation of left-behind children in Chinese society.
Dandelion
mixed medium
20"x 30"
Dandelion flower language is “unstoppable love”, just like the left-behind children. Parents leave their children because they want to give them a better life. Although they love their children, their love will become distant once there is a distance between them.
Wanderer
mixed medium
20"x 30"
Blue is the color of sadness and the color of the sea. A child drifting in a boat without swinging oars. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to land, I don’t know where home is.” As a left-behind child, I often feel like I am drifting, not knowing where my home is, lonely and helpless.
I used the lines of waves to write the word “left behind” in Chinese, and used a more abstract technique to draw the sea.