bio
Jiangshengyu Nova Pan was born and raised in Hangzhou, China, and is a moving image and installation artist. She currently lives and works in Baltimore. Pan earned her BFA in design at the School of Visual Arts and MFA in the Mount Royal School of Art (Multidisciplinary MFA) at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Pan’s work focuses on human mobility. Working from the perspective of the individual, at times the artist herself, Pan’s work explores the profound transformations of space, power relations, and social networks faced by a mobile population. While her work was originally inspired by the Chinese context, where the blistering pace of social and economic change has made migration an inevitability for millions, she uses this history as an aperture, playing with scale and moving beyond place, exploring how mobility is internalized and migration felt in the body.
Pan’s artistic practice is heavily influenced by cinema-as-medium, interviews, rumor, and intergenerational story-telling.
Jiangshengyu Nova Pan was born and raised in Hangzhou, China, and is a moving image and installation artist. She currently lives and works in Baltimore. Pan earned her BFA in design at the School of Visual Arts and MFA in the Mount Royal School of Art (Multidisciplinary MFA) at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Pan’s work focuses on human mobility. Working from the perspective of the individual, at times the artist herself, Pan’s work explores the profound transformations of space, power relations, and social networks faced by a mobile population. While her work was originally inspired by the Chinese context, where the blistering pace of social and economic change has made migration an inevitability for millions, she uses this history as an aperture, playing with scale and moving beyond place, exploring how mobility is internalized and migration felt in the body.
Pan’s artistic practice is heavily influenced by cinema-as-medium, interviews, rumor, and intergenerational story-telling.
statement
I’m unavoidably in motion, in the sense of time and space, in every sense, by force or by choice. I see it as a long, winding walk, with pauses, sometimes on horseback, like a nomad. Everything blurs in the movement, as if passing through a veil of mist.
I walk among the mist, collecting images and footage. It’s a sampling of landscapes, debris, and anonymous paragraphs—about the land, migration, and the tension between nostalgia and progress, all blurred and unclear, established then overturned. I weave together 'facts' and 'fiction' attempt to see a hazy past or an uncertain future, tirelessly repeating to prove that nothing is ever certain. What we hold onto is an unverifiable shard, an indistinct blur shrouded in mist, unknowable, always in motion. You don’t have to believe me; but take a walk with me for a moment.
我意识到我始终不停的移动，被迫的或主动的，在时间和空间的意义上，任何意义上。我把它看作是一场漫长的散步，停顿，有时也可能在马背上。一切都在运动中变的模糊，如同在薄雾中穿行。
我在薄雾中穿行，采集图像及影像。我搜集片段，景观，碎屑，和不知来处的段落—关于土地，迁徙，怀旧与进步间的紧张关系，模糊的不清晰的，被成立又被推翻又被成立。我用“事实”和“虚构”, 尝试“清晰“一段模糊的往事或不确定的未来，不知疲倦的重复，来证明没有什么是确定的。你和我所抓住的始终是一个无法佐证的残片，运动中被薄雾笼罩的模糊的一团不可知。你不需要相信我，你只需要与我同行片刻。
I walk among the mist, collecting images and footage. It’s a sampling of landscapes, debris, and anonymous paragraphs—about the land, migration, and the tension between nostalgia and progress, all blurred and unclear, established then overturned. I weave together 'facts' and 'fiction' attempt to see a hazy past or an uncertain future, tirelessly repeating to prove that nothing is ever certain. What we hold onto is an unverifiable shard, an indistinct blur shrouded in mist, unknowable, always in motion. You don’t have to believe me; but take a walk with me for a moment.
我意识到我始终不停的移动，被迫的或主动的，在时间和空间的意义上，任何意义上。我把它看作是一场漫长的散步，停顿，有时也可能在马背上。一切都在运动中变的模糊，如同在薄雾中穿行。
我在薄雾中穿行，采集图像及影像。我搜集片段，景观，碎屑，和不知来处的段落—关于土地，迁徙，怀旧与进步间的紧张关系，模糊的不清晰的，被成立又被推翻又被成立。我用“事实”和“虚构”, 尝试“清晰“一段模糊的往事或不确定的未来，不知疲倦的重复，来证明没有什么是确定的。你和我所抓住的始终是一个无法佐证的残片，运动中被薄雾笼罩的模糊的一团不可知。你不需要相信我，你只需要与我同行片刻。