Between Worlds, Between Kinds
DIRD, the collaborative id of artists Rui Shi and Zijing Zhao, emerged from an opportunity encounter on the Royal Faculty of Artwork in London. What started as experimental play with scraps of paper and miniature puppets quickly advanced right into a singular inventive imaginative and prescient formed by their differing backgrounds—Rui with a basis in theatre design and printmaking, and Zijing with a follow rooted in portray and modern artwork. These divergent beginning factors created a productive stress, permitting the duo to develop a hybrid follow that defies strict categorization. Their work exists in a state of fluidity, not solely in medium however in idea, occupying a liminal house that thrives on flux and contradiction.
The duo’s fascination with alternate realities, storytelling, and transformation steers their artistic impulses. Rui’s theatrical sensibility brings a spatial and narrative layering to their constructions, whereas Zijing’s painterly instincts provide a symbolic and speculative depth. Collectively, they craft visible experiences that reject linearity and rejoice ambiguity. Their preliminary discovery of stop-motion animation served as a catalyst—this medium, outlined by its fragility and repetition, allowed them to merge their abilities whereas giving type to ephemeral, shifting worlds. By means of this lens, making artwork grew to become much less about producing fastened objects and extra about establishing environments the place id, fable, and embodiment are continually in negotiation.
DIRD’s studio follow displays the identical state of suspended certainty that defines their work. Chaos will not be solely welcomed however embraced as a core a part of the method. Their workspace is a collage of supplies—crumbled paper, bits of clay, puppet limbs, wires, and screens. Disruption is folded into creation, with interruptions and technical glitches typically changing into prompts reasonably than issues. For DIRD, the act of constructing will not be about refining towards perfection however about honoring instability, multiplicity, and the unusual great thing about the unresolved.
DIRD: The place Myths Refuse to Finish
DIRD’s inventive voice reverberates by way of a language constructed from fragility, disruption, and rebirth. Their visible lexicon blends analog and digital, flesh and code, paper and metal. Of their items, characters and landscapes don’t stay static—they flicker, dissolve, and reconfigure. This fixed mutability is rooted of their conceptual core: a refusal of binaries, whether or not in gender, type, or narrative. Slightly than retelling historical tales as-is, DIRD fractures them open, rearranging their items into new configurations that resist finality. Myths, for them, are usually not fastened scripts however uncooked supplies to be reassembled in infinite methods.
A recurring determine inside their work is Princess Miaoshan, a mythological character who resists patriarchal authority, dies by hearth, and is reborn because the bodhisattva Guanyin. This narrative grew to become the seed for Mountain of Flames, a stop-motion animation that has expanded over time right into a multi-work exploration of cyclical id and resistance. The artists painting Miaoshan not as a static heroine, however as an evolving image of queer transformation. Her physique—rendered as a fragile puppet—glints out and in of coherence, reflecting the instability of type itself. On this fable, they discover a prototype for tales that transcend gender, linearity, and management.
Their curiosity in fable is way from nostalgic. Whereas conventional storytelling typically enforces hierarchy and backbone, DIRD approaches mythology as an area for disruption and play. Influences from Asian non secular traditions, particularly Buddhist and Daoist cosmologies, merge with feminist and queer idea to query dominant narratives. Thinkers like Donna Haraway and Legacy Russell inform their method to embodiment and expertise, whereas visible artists corresponding to Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Cao Fei encourage their merging of fantasy, reminiscence, and socio-political critique. The result’s an artwork follow the place fable turns into a web site of resistance, and the physique is at all times within the means of changing into.
Rebuilding the Burnt Physique
On the coronary heart of DIRD’s artistic output is Mountain of Flames, an ongoing collection that has grown right into a constellation of associated works. Initially conceived as a stop-motion animation in 2020, the piece takes the traditional story of Princess Miaoshan and twists it right into a commentary on energy, sacrifice, and transformation. Through the use of fragile paper puppets, the duo underscores the stress between vulnerability and endurance. Miaoshan’s repeated dying and rebirth turn into metaphors for id that refuses containment, continually shifting between destruction and reconstruction. Her physique, repeatedly undone and remade, turns into a vessel by way of which the artists query what it means to outlive in a world that calls for obedience.
Miaoshan (2023), a later work inside the identical universe, deepens this exploration. Structured as a looping video, it resists narrative closure and foregrounds repetition as a type of resistance. The piece opens with a defiant proclamation: “The story is supreme.” However this supremacy is straight away interrogated. The patriarchal, linear story is dismantled because the protagonist’s physique begins to refuse its assigned future. On this retelling, the parable will not be merely revised—it’s destabilized. The reborn Miaoshan withholds obedience, asserting autonomy by way of cyclical returns and gradual decomposition. Ritual and decay turn into instruments for unmaking dominant narratives.
The Mountain of Flames mission has expanded past animation to incorporate browser-based 3D environments, corresponding to The Mountain of Reincarnation, and gallery installations. Every iteration builds on the final, refusing closure and embracing evolution. Set inside landscapes scarred by ecological and societal collapse, these works think about new terrains the place queerness is not only an id however a technique of imagining. By means of digital interfaces, sculptural fragments, and flickering movement, DIRD invitations viewers right into a speculative house the place fable is rewritten, and utopia is glimpsed by way of the ashes of previous worlds. The physique, as soon as burned, turns into the blueprint for futures that don’t but exist.
DIRD: Animation as Afterlife
For DIRD, animation is greater than a medium—it’s a philosophy of constructing. Their method to materials and digital varieties facilities on the thought of animating matter right into a sort of afterlife. Whether or not working with paper, metal, clay, or code, the main target stays the identical: to breathe instability into static issues. Animation, particularly stop-motion, presents an area the place errors are usually not merely accepted however generative. Every glitch, hesitation, or repetition turns into a technique to converse to themes of disintegration and renewal. Of their work, animation doesn’t serve to create phantasm however to reveal the seams and sutures that maintain collectively each constructed world.
The duo’s early foray into stop-motion was not only a technical selection however a creative epiphany. It aligned completely with their curiosity in fragility and speculative storytelling. However they’ve since expanded their vocabulary to incorporate portray, sculpture, interactive media, and digital installations. The selection of medium at all times follows the calls for of the narrative. A fable may emerge within the type of a puppet or demand to inhabit a browser window. Whereas the supplies change, the underlying drive stays fixed: to discover how objects, our bodies, and narratives may flicker between dissolution and coherence.
Their present dream mission, Each Videogame Depicts the Finish of the World, encapsulates this ethos. Conceived as a large-scale set up, it goals to unite sculpture, video, and interactivity to problem the apocalyptic tropes prevalent in gaming and media. Slightly than depicting a single cataclysm, the work will body apocalypse as an ongoing situation—one that’s ecological, social, and psychological. Inside this imagined atmosphere, queer temporality and digital aesthetics will coalesce right into a residing, glitching panorama. For DIRD, the top of the world will not be an ending in any respect, however a starting: the second when one thing new begins to shimmer into being.
