Abstract
dc:description.abstract<p>My thesis project, Undefinitive, examines the cyclical process of destruction, transformation, and rebirth through installation, ceramics, and text. With a deep unease toward my own gendered body, I investigate how vulnerability, both physical and psychological, can become a site of resistance and empowerment. Drawing from feminist theory, Chinese mythology, and stream-of-consciousness narratives, my work explores the monstrous and the fragmented as inseparable states of one’s becoming. Through references to body art, speculative fiction, and queer theory, I reimagine femininity and queerness as forces capable of dismantaling societal structure and forging new modes of existence.</p> <p>Set in a post-apocalyptic world where consciousness inhabits non-human forms, Undefinitive tells a queer love story between a moth and an orchid at the dusk of the human era. Using text as the foundation for worldbuilding, I construct a fragmented installation where ceramic sculptures and video projections evoke fictional histories that resist linearity and definition. By inhabiting the in-between space of human and non-human, body and mind, I explore how gender, love, and identity might persist beyond the collapse of traditional binaries. In doing so, I seek to envision a new ontology rooted in fragmentation, transformation, and queer affinity.</p>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Thesis
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Graduate School of Art
- Year dc:date.available
- 2025
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Mu, Lan
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Heather Bennett
- Monika Weiss
Subjects
dc:subject × 11Rights
- Language dc:language
- English
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_visual_art/32
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:mfa_visual_art-1031