DOMESTIC DREAM

The artwork "DOMESTIC DREAM," created by Ouyang Jiamin, is an installation comprising a breathing, movable sculpture, paper carvings, and two videos. The piece was conceived in 2022, as the global COVID-19 situation gradually improved. However, in China at that time, pandemic prevention policies were still stringent. College students were required to strictly adhere to these regulations, with one of the most crucial being that they were not allowed to leave the campus for the entire semester, lasting about five months. Specific rules varied by university, with some even requiring students to stay within their dormitory buildings.

In this context, the trend of keeping “paper pet dogs” emerged in Chinese universities. Students would regularly feed their paper dogs, perform nucleic acid tests on them, and walk them in groups around the campus. This intriguing phenomenon not only highlights how concepts can be defined by individuals but also showcases the emotional needs humans have for non-human entities. During the pandemic, the students were not concerned about whether the “dogs” were living beings. As long as these paper creatures provided emotional value during the lockdown, they were as good as real pets. This made the artist reflect on how, in many futuristic sci-fi works that discuss the future, attention is often only paid to how humans might survive and how nature might change, neglecting the domesticated animals that live between nature and human society.

In the installation, the artist created an abstract, breathing “dog” using wool to make its fur, with the rib area being semi-transparent, allowing viewers to observe the expansion and contraction during its “breathing” process. Around it, four paper dogs made using laser cutting techniques are displayed, creating a spatial division that distinguishes the external natural environment from the internal human society. The paper dogs are seen surrounding the mechanical dog in the family setting and watching videos. The smaller screen shows the daily life of the artist’s pet dog, captured by the artist herself. On the larger screen, mixed footage of college students caring for their paper dogs is shown, including walking the dogs, performing nucleic acid tests on them, and creating flying paper dogs. Since dogs have a different color perception compared to humans, a filter was added to the paper dog video to replicate the world as seen through a dog’s eyes.

Upon observing this strange, breathing creature that doesn’t quite resemble a dog, audiences are invited to engage in a range of interpretations. It could represent anything from a future old dog on the brink of death, being saved by its owner through advanced medical technology, to a cybernetic organism, partially alive and partially mechanized, or even a purely mechanical product designed to provide emotional support to future humans. The stray paper dogs outside the delineated floor space—born out of the emotional needs of students in the Chinese campuses of 2022 and representing a new breed of non-living pet dogs—are observing the domestic lives of paper dogs bred by humans and real pet dogs, fantasizing about their own dreams of integrating into families and fulfilling their roles as pets.