“This project is a conversation with my grandma, and it is also a kind of inheritance of consciousness. Grandma's years of upbringing have penetrated my blood. The lack of knowledge has not affected her attitude and beliefs. This time, I taught her, her name. And I asked her to teach her how to embroider her name. The simple dialogue method breaks away from the traditional exhibition mode and returns to the place where I lived when I was a child."

In Wang Yu’s work, the thread is not merely a material, but a metaphor and structure of emotion and memory – symbolizing the bonds, inheritance, and continuity between mother, daughter, and grandmother.

With the embodied practice shared between Wang Yu and her grandmother, the thread becomes a living entity – connecting the shared memories and care of generations of women.

This video-based installation documents Wang Yu and her grandmother embroidering together.  

Wang Yu shared that she wore her grandmother’s hand-embroidered insoles from childhood. In this piece, they used two needles and one thread to embroider two insoles simultaneously – her grandmother embroidering traditional Mongolian patterns on one side, while Wang Yu stitched her grandmother’s name on the other. The red thread passes through both insoles, physically linking their movements.

Here, the red thread serves as both tool and symbol.

It conveys the intertwining of language, craftsmanship, and bloodline.

She explains that these threads are not neat, but tangled, pulled, even chaotic — much like real kinship: in infancy, the maternal bond is tightly woven; as children grow, the thread gradually stretches; and during adolescence or adulthood, its tension intensifies—a tug between the warmth of closeness and the pull toward independence.

Even when far away, studying abroad, this thread persists.

It may become a telephone cord, or an echo of memory, yet it never breaks.

Through this piece, Wang Yu transforms the everyday, feminine labour of embroidery into a metaphor for intergenerational emotion and memory transmission.

 The red thread becomes the language of feeling — frozen time, flowing memory.

This piece reveals how matrilineal bonds are continuously woven and passed down through manual labour and lived experience.

Cradle, video (TV display 4’36”), variable size, 2025 

“This work continues my exploration of the rupture and "loss" of cultural identity. In this piece, I combine the traditional Mongolian cradle with an electronic display screen, binding them together with red yarn to create a symbolic "knot." This binding is not only a physical restraint but also a profound metaphor for the emotional tension within familial relationships. The binding creates an inseparable connection between the cradle and the screen, while the image on the screen, showing the motion of two people playing string games, symbolises the complexity and conflict in human relationships. 

As the actions of the two individuals shift from order to chaos, the image conveys emotional fluctuations from intimacy to entanglement, from order to disorder, reflecting the underlying tension and instability within family or intimate relationships.” 

她的第二件作品《摇篮》，形式更为抽象，但情感更加深刻。

在这件装置作品中，王宇将传统的蒙古摇篮与红线、以及外祖母唱的蒙古民谣录音结合在一起。

在蒙古文化中，摇篮象征着母性与庇护—— 它是生命开始的地方，是孩子第一次感受到家庭节奏的空间。

但在王宇的作品里，摇篮被红线紧紧缠绕， 那条线既是守护，也是一种束缚，暗示着跨越几代女性之间的复杂情感张力。

录音中的外祖母歌声，为作品增添了一种极为私密的温度。

王宇告诉我，在蒙古传统中，摇篮曲不仅是一首歌，更是一种记忆的声音。

它承载着语言、情感与文化的延续。

当她把外祖母的歌声嵌入装置中，声音就成了一种无形的线， 与红线交织在一起——一个可见，一个不可见。

它们共同构建起一种延续的象征结构， 连接起身体与声音、物件与记忆、个人与群体。

因此，这个摇篮不仅是一个家庭物件， 它成为了一个代际共鸣的象征空间， 在其中，情感、血脉与文化的纽带彼此交织。

通过《摇篮》，王宇思考了母系关系中那种脆弱却持久的连接。

她用物质与声音的交织，展现出身份与记忆并非固定不变， 而是不断被时间、情感与文化重新编织的过程。

In this installation, Wang Yu combines a traditional Mongolian cradle with red thread and a recording of her grandmother singing Mongolian folk songs.  

In Mongolian culture, the cradle symbolizes motherhood and protection – it is where life begins, the space where a child first feels the rhythm of home. Yet in Wang Yu’s work, the cradle is tightly bound by red thread – a chord that both protects and restrains, hinting at the complex emotional tensions spanning generations of women.

The grandmother’s voice in the recording lends the piece an intensely, intimate warmth. Wang Yu shared that in Mongolian tradition, a lullaby is not merely a song, but the very sound of memory. It carries the continuity of language, emotion, and culture. When she embeds her grandmother’s voice into the installation, sound becomes an invisible thread, intertwining with the red thread – one visible, one invisible. Together, they construct a symbolic structure of continuity: connecting body and voice; object and memory; individual and collective.

Thus, the cradle transcends from being a mere household object, but rather transforms into a symbolic and embodied space of intergenerational transmission – where bonds of emotion, bloodline, and culture intertwine.

Through ‘Cradle’, Wang Yu contemplates the fragile yet enduring connections within matrilineal relationships. By weaving together materiality and sound, she reveals that identity and memory are not fixed identities, but rather multi-sensory processes continually re-woven by time, emotion, and culture.

In her work, thread serves both as a symbol of connection and a vessel for memory, and reveals that the “thread” in this exhibition transcends mere visual symbolism, embodying an emotional and cultural bond — a metaphor that tightly weaves together private experience and collective history, the female body and cultural identity.

烙糖饼

食材清单： 

面粉 

水 

熟芝麻 

绵白糖 

大蒜 

做法步骤： 

1.面粉250克倒热水180克，边倒边搅，🥢搅成絮状，揉成面团 

2.糖馅做法：绵白糖60克，面粉5克，芝麻10克，大蒜切碎，搅拌均匀 

3.面团分成八个小球，擀成面皮（中间稍厚一点）包入糖馅，拍扁擀成小饼 

4.油热下锅，翻面刷油 烙至鼓起即可 

“本作品延续了我对文化身份断裂与“失落”的探索。在此创作中，我将传统的蒙古摇篮与电子显示屏结合，用红线将其捆绑成象征性的“结”。这种捆绑不仅是物理上的束缚，更是家庭关系中情感张力的深刻隐喻。缚结使摇篮与屏幕形成不可分割的联结，而屏幕上两人玩绳游戏的动态影像，则象征着人际关系的复杂性与冲突性。

当两人动作从有序渐趋混乱，画面传递的情感波动亦从亲密转向纠缠，从秩序走向失序，映射出家庭或亲密关系中潜藏的张力与不稳定性”