The Digital Gallery: Full Moon and the Bloom

The Learning Space is proud to present a new work by Sydney artist Eye Shen.

Eye Shen’s mother photographs the flowers in her garden and sends them as daily digital-greetings to family and friends overseas. These photographs embody nostalgia, the longing for reconnection and hope for a better life. Just like the colours of the flowers in these pictures, Australia embodies many diverse cultures and ethnicities. Migrants just like Eye Shen’s mother have profoundly influenced the places, people and community they live in.

In Full Moon and the Bloom the artist uses her mother's photographs to poetically portray the experience of immigration and displacement. Signifying day and night, these moving paintings represent the constant flux of our belonging and identity, morphing with personal and collective experiences.

The work takes its title from a popular Chinese song from the 1940s, 月圆花好 (The Full Moon and the Blooming Flowers). The song depicts the concept of reunion and love, a topic that relates to many cultures.

Starting on the day of Mid-Autumn Festival, Eye Shen’s brightly coloured animation sends an auspicious message to everyone who walks past.

Eye Shen is a Sydney-based artist. Her work explores the question of individual and collective identities and belonging through digital footprints. Blending visual elements of her Chinese heritage with aesthetic and material experiments, her work is a dynamic story-telling of the world we live in.