I Forgot But You Will Remember extends Chai Mi's inquiry into interspecies fluidity, alongside themes of dreams and memory, separation and wandering, and the perception shared between humans and animals. Completed over five years (2020–2025), the work draws from a vast archive of ancient Asian paintings, deconstructing and reimagining individual memories and ancient imagery through handmade paper-cutting, collage, photography, and stop-motion animation. Notably, the stop-motion technique—imbuing inanimate objects with motion and emotion through frame-by-frame manipulation—embodies the artist's mimicry of living behaviors. The photographic elements originate from images Chai Mi captured during COVID-19 lockdown in a technology development park north of Shanghai. The narrative unfolds through the perspective of "Little Dog," a stray adopted by the artist during isolation, while the text derives from letters she wrote to her daughter. In the work, a voiceover lingers as plants and animals morph dreamlike. Memories and ineffable emotions coalesce into an intimate yet detached prose-poem tension, constructing a canine's vision of a city devoid of humans. Within this dream, the boundaries between species—both physical and cognitive—dissolve. Time folds upon itself, entangling reality with history, while memory stands firm against oblivion.
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