Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

Butterfly Effects

Oct 28, 2022 - Michelle Sijia Ma

In Butterfly Effects, I was inspired by Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem. Through setting up semi-constructed scenes and fantasizing about the relationship between archival images and the novel, I try to explore the chain of reactions between one’s decision and reality, order within disorder, hunger, nightmare, and the presence of self-awareness in the strange daily landscape. 

When Cheng Xin’s spacecraft hit a large body of water on Europa, she saw indigenous plants of Europa crawling and growing from the water to chase sunlight emitted from the spaceship, until it completely crashed and destroyed her suits. The body of water on Europa and the ever-growing plant become a metaphor when I think about space and where I am now. For a short moment, these texts made me realize that everything I thought mattered so much once turned out to be quite meaningless and insignificant.