Self-decolonization

Self-decolonization

Guo, Haiming

My work is inspired by the murals of the Mogao Caves and reflects on their destruction during Langdon Warner's early-20th-century expedition. After visiting the Harvard Art Museums and seeing the fragments, I felt compelled to confront the irreversibility of cultural loss and the ways the Western perspective shapes the representation of Asian bodies. Fragmentation serves as both a strategy and a scar, featuring jagged contours and floating motifs that disrupt the reading and create tension. I explore how colonial history has shaped East Asian beauty standards, resonating with Malcolm X's provocative speech of Who taught you to hate yourself? I create a self-portrait using mural-like pigments, intricate line work, and iconography as a form of resistance and self-reclamation.

2026