Blooming Destiny
May 2025
With the support of the Xiaogan Municipal Government, I was invited by DPM Dopamine Art & Tech to complete my first large-scale permanent public art installation, Blooming Destiny. Unveiled in May 2025 at the Olympic Park in Xiaogan, Hubei, the work also debuted as part of the Honor of Kings Esports Music Festival.
Inspired by the classic Huangmei opera The Heavenly Match, the installation draws upon the legendary romance between Dong Yong, a mortal, and the Seventh Fairy Maiden from heaven.
According to folklore, their love took root beneath a sophora tree—a symbol of fidelity and celestial blessing. Using this narrative as a starting point, the project transforms the park into a walkable, immersive dreamscape that blends mythology, local culture, and traditional shadow puppetry with contemporary spatial aesthetics.
At the heart of the installation stands a stylized sophora tree, shaped with a canopy that resembles both a painterly landscape and an open parasol. The entire layout radiates outward like a blooming flower. Across a symbolic bridge, silhouettes of Dong Yong and the Fairy Maiden gaze at each other from opposite sides of the tree—an eternal moment of longing captured in light and form.
By night, internal lighting casts dynamic shadows through intricately carved acrylic leaves, turning the ground into a shifting canvas of silhouettes. Viewers are invited to move slowly through the space, as if stepping into a living scroll of spring.
I introduced six symbolic animals to embody loyalty, union, freedom, and renewal.
Paired birds reflect the bond between Dong Yong and the Fairy, who gaze at each other across the bridge.
Mandarin ducks, deer, cranes, butterflies, and swallows add layers of love, peace, and transformation.
The Dream of the Sophora Tree is both a spatial interpretation of a time-honored tale and an artistic gesture toward the possibility of reimagining Eastern narratives within contemporary public life.
