So long, My Pain is inspired by recent news reported in mainland China. A woman considered a “psychopath” has been found kidnapped, married to a man in a remote village and giving birth to eight kids (seven of them are boys). For 20 years she was dehumanized – chained up and treated like a dog, and living under terrible conditions. Without warm clothes even in extreme weather in northern China, she was left to sleep on the concrete floor. When being asked, the only recognizable sentence she could say was, “The world abandoned me.” (這個世界不要我了) Meanwhile, it was found that the man who bought her from a human trafficker had been enjoying the subsidy issued by the local government due to his poverty status of having 8 kids. 

As an advocate of feminism in my daily life, I am extremely sensitive to the pain suffered by women. I can’t image how she went through such prolonged terror. I am painful and angry about such sufferings which have lasted thousands of years under patriarchy.

My collage-painting describes how women are gradually “eaten” by men. They can be any one of us, and the victim can be any woman, regardless of her social status and education background. At the last part of the video, half of the face is shown on the skeleton and claiming, “The world has abandoned me.” The face towards the end of the collage-montage sequence is from Pedro Roldan’s The Mater Dolorosa (1675, sorrowful mother Virgin Mary), with which I want to make the pain in my story more specific. 

Sources of images used for collage-construction: 

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Levitan, I. I. (1898). Дорога. https://gallerix.ru/album/Levitan/pic/glrx-251309204 

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1RGp4Zzu6FvluTJDi3KdOF5nu2yAk/  

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Monet, C. (1867). Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre in the Garden. Hermitage Museum, Rassia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_in_the_Garden#/media/File:Cl

aude_Monet_022.jpg 

Monet, C. (1872). Impression, sunrise. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression,_Sunrise#/media/File:Monet _-_Impression,_Sunrise.jpg 

[Pitbull Dog]. (n.d.). Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301037556352648817/

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Roldan, P. (1670). Mater Dolorosa. Bode Museum, Berlin, Germany. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_Lady_of_Sorrows_(M

ater_Dolorosa)_by_Pedro_Roldan,_Seville,_c._1670-1675,_poplar_wood_-_Bo

de-Museum_-_DSC02966.JPG 

Shishkin, I. I. (1876). Autumn Forest. Volgograd Fine Arts Museum, Rassia. https://arthive.com/zh/ivanshishkin/works/33863~Autumn_forest 

Van Gogh, V. W. (1889). The Starry Night. Museum of Modern Art, New York, United

States. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-st

arry-night-1889/ 

Vintage Collage Creator. (n.d.). Graphicgoods. Retrieved February 2, 2022, from https://graphicgoods.net/downloads/vintage-collage-creator/ 

ZShadowTV. (2018, December 31). Fork Tableware White Plate PNG. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/387591111690465085/