## Synopsis
`Mermaid In The City`以一种松散的章节结构展开，将身体局部、玩具、动物、食物和水的意象组织成一段意识流影像。素材拍摄于 2019-2020 年，并在 2023-2024 年被重新整理和完成。这个时间差让作品同时承载两种身体经验：一种来自疫情前后仍然游移、探索和寻找自由的日常，另一种来自后期剪辑时对这些影像的重新观看和重新理解。
作品的起点是创作者对自己腿部的不满，但这种不满并不被处理成简单的外貌焦虑。腿在作品中是一种限制：它承载身体，也暴露身体；它让人移动，也让人意识到自己被困在一种被观看和评判的形态里。
影片中的芭比娃娃、猪、橘子和鱼缸并不承担传统叙事功能，而是作为身体经验的替身出现。芭比娃娃的腿指向理想化、塑料化的女性身体；城市中的猪和抽烟动作制造出荒诞、粗粝和欲望化的断裂；橘子和鱼缸则将食物、液体、容器和身体内部性连在一起。最终出现的美人鱼并不是完成变身后的自由主体，而是一个更加暧昧的形象：她拥有尾巴和鳞片，却失去了行走的可能。
作品试图捕捉一种年轻女性身体经验中的矛盾：我们既想脱离自己的身体，又只能通过身体想象自由；我们渴望变形，却不知道变成另一种形态是否意味着真正逃脱。
`Mermaid In The City` unfolds as a loose chapter-based experimental video, arranging fragments of body parts, toys, animals, food and water into a stream of bodily consciousness. The footage was filmed between 2019 and 2020, then reassembled and completed in 2023-2024. This temporal gap allows the work to carry two bodily experiences at once: one connected to wandering, exploration and the search for freedom around the pandemic period, and another shaped by the later act of looking back at and re-reading these images.
The work begins with the artist's dissatisfaction with her legs, but this dissatisfaction is not framed simply as an issue of appearance. In the work, legs become a form of limitation: they carry the body, expose the body, enable movement and, at the same time, make the body feel trapped in a form that is constantly seen and judged.
The Barbie doll, the pig, the orange and the fish tank do not function as narrative devices in a conventional sense. They appear as substitutes and extensions of bodily experience. The Barbie doll's legs evoke an idealised and plasticised image of femininity; the pig and the act of smoking introduce absurdity, animality and desire into the urban environment; the orange and the fish tank connect food, liquid, containers and the interiority of the body. The mermaid that appears at the end is not a liberated figure after transformation, but a more ambiguous body: she gains scales and a tail, yet loses the possibility of walking.
The work explores a contradiction within young female embodiment: the desire to escape one's own body, and the impossibility of imagining freedom outside of the body. Transformation is presented not as a solution, but as another form of captivity.
## Artist Statement
我创作 `Mermaid In The City` 的起点是对自己腿部的不满，但在剪辑过程中，我逐渐意识到这种不满并不真正来自“腿不够好看”，而是来自一种身体上的不自由。腿让我能够移动，但它也让我不断意识到自己被困在身体里，被某种女性身体的标准观看和衡量。
美人鱼对我来说是一个很矛盾的形象。她通常被想象成美丽、神秘、自由的存在，但她其实没有能够行走的腿。她属于水，却也被水困住。这个形象让我想到很多关于女性身体的幻想：我们常常以为只要变成另一种更美、更理想、更神话化的身体，就可以摆脱现实中的限制，但也许那只是换了一种方式被困住。
作品里的猪、芭比娃娃、橘子、鱼缸和浴缸都不是完整叙事的一部分，而是我身体感受的碎片。它们拍摄于 2019-2020 年，后来在 2023-2024 年被重新剪辑和组织。对我来说，这个延迟很重要：一些画面原本来自更自由、更丰富的日常时刻，但在后期制作时，它们被后来对于身体限制和不自由的感受重新覆盖。通过把这些素材放在一起，我想让作品处在一种介于现实和梦之间的状态：像一个关于身体的童话，但这个童话并不真的安慰人。
The starting point of `Mermaid In The City` was my dissatisfaction with my own legs. During the editing process, however, I realised that this dissatisfaction did not come simply from the way my legs looked, but from a deeper sense of bodily unfreedom. Legs allow me to move, yet they also make me aware of being trapped inside a body that is constantly observed, measured and compared against ideals of femininity.
For me, the mermaid is a contradictory figure. She is often imagined as beautiful, mysterious and free, yet she does not have legs with which to walk. She belongs to water, but is also confined by it. This image reflects many fantasies projected onto the female body: the belief that becoming another, more beautiful, more idealised or more mythical body might allow us to escape the limitations of our real one. But perhaps transformation only produces another form of captivity.
The pig, the Barbie doll, the orange, the fish tank and the bathtub are not parts of a linear narrative. They are fragments of bodily sensation. The footage was filmed between 2019 and 2020 and later edited and reassembled in 2023-2024. This delay matters to me: some images originally came from more open and abundant moments, but during post-production they were covered by a later awareness of bodily limitation and unfreedom. By placing these materials together, I wanted the work to exist somewhere between reality and dream: a bodily fairy tale that refuses to offer comfort.
↳Directed, edited, performed and shot by Ruiqi Zhang