Winter of 2019 in Wujiaqu

This series of works was created during the winter of 2019.

At the time, I had traveled by motorcycle to Xinjiang and didn't return home for the New Year. Instead, I found myself quarantined in a 17th-floor rooftop studio in Wujiaqu City. It was the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, a time when the entire country was on high alert. I was alone in that massive building, save for two cats and a dog. To keep from going stir-crazy, I would take the elevator down to the ground floor every day and force myself to climb the stairwell back up, repeating the cycle over and over. Looking down from the rooftop, the streets below were completely deserted, broken only by the occasional police car or ambulance flashing by.

I rarely share my work with others, but during that period, I posted every finished piece online day after day. Locked down in our respective isolations, I knew some of them were actively waiting to see these drawings. It became a silent way of whispering "I'm okay," and perhaps one of the ways we shared to carve out a sliver of peace during that suffocating winter.