Zihui Song (b. 1990, Xi’an, China) is an artist lives and works in the United States and China. She holds an MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media from Maryland Institute College of Art. With the use of photography and video, Song’s work explores the complexities of women’s bewilderments and identities in the context of Chines patriarchal society. Her work has been exhibited internationally in a variety of venues, her latest shows including the VAFA 2016 Film Festival, Macau; Project 1612 Film Festival, Peoria, IL; Qifang 2016 Screenings, Traveling Screenings in China.

Here is her statement about her project:
“A Work of Narrative Intimacy” is an ongoing project investigating representations of women’s identities and autonomies. While feminist thought helps us understand ourselves in a patriarchal world and frees us to make informed choices, feminist orthodoxy is becoming another set of rules that takes away women’s choice and autonomy. Instead of helping women understand themselves and giving them tools to resist patriarchy, the feminist orthodoxy is replacing one set of oppressive, elitist rules with another equally oppressive and elitist set of rules.

By taking an intimate relationship as a subject, I utilize photography to challenge the idealistic feminist relationship by playing an ostensibly passive role. By means of self-definition, self-disclosure and self-exploration, this work subverts prevailing negative stereotypes of feminists and asks if there is a set of criteria that makes an individual an authentic feminist. My intention of this work is to convey the importance of women’s autonomies and exemplify what Simone de Beauvoir said in The Second Sex, “The true problem for woman is to reject theses flights from reality and seek self-fulfillment in transcendence.”

Yubo Dong  is a photographer based in Irvine. Influenced by his undergraduate education in Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, Yubo works largely comments to the power structure in business organizations and in consumer cultures. His works have been shown in ARCHES space, Dallas; Irvine Fine Art Center, Irvine; gallery no one, Chicago, and Society for Photographic Education National Conference in Las Vegas and Tulsa, among others. Yubo Dong is a MFA candidate at University of California, Irvine.
Yubo Dong’s works are informed by his education in business and research on consumerism and capitalism. Through depicting the venues where sale and promotion happens, the photographs present the performance of participants, as well as the promotional environment in business transactions. By abstracting these space and moments into photographs, audiences are encouraged to examine the interaction and performance.