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FOR ME, FOR YOU, FOR HER

Yijing Niu

Profile picture of Yijing Niu

I am a visual and tattoo artist traveling between London and Beijing. I am also a narrator who is always in dialogue with memory, trauma and tenderness.

I make books, noise. I also paint and tattoo. My works always wander at the border - between mother and daughter, between body and symbol, between home and escape.

I am a visual and tattoo artist traveling between London and Beijing. I am also a narrator who is...

This project, led by my personal experience, draws on feminist theory of “the personal is political,” highlighting how individual stories reflect broader social structures.

Through embroidery, writing, and image-making, I explore how patriarchy disciplines mothers into self-sacrifice and traps daughters between obedience and resistance. Using stitched letters, low-tech sound triggers, and domestic scents, the work invites emotional participation, exposing intimate violence embedded in “love” and family roles.

This is a critical confrontation reclaiming memory, vulnerability, and emotion as feminist tools of resistance—a body speaking back, transforming private pain into collective memory.

Final work

An embroidered letter overlays a printed, distorted face image. The poster rests under a windshield wiper on a red car.

Poster Series 3

All text is hand-sewn.

I chose to use the "sewing" method because my mother particularly likes cross-stitch,

However, after research behind women's needlework, this seemingly gentle and domestic behavior, is actually a complex response to the family's oppressive structure.

Embroidered letters are overlaid on an image of two hands in a gesture of imprisonment. The poster is attached to a tree.

Poster Series 4

The choice of "senses"

When touch the specific words, the voices of my mothers appear, admonishing, arguing, and crying...

Each poster has its own smell, which is the smell of my mother in my memory.

Embroidered letters are overlaid on an image of a cage. The poster is placed on a piece of broken glass.

Poster Series 7

8 Poster Series hang on wood shelf.

Poster Series

In the repeated interweaving of stitches, words and smells, I reopened those unspoken words and unacknowledged wounds, and tried to transform "mother" from a structural role into a person who can be understood, questioned and approached. 

This is not the end of reconciliation, but an ongoing dialogue: a dialogue between me and my mother, between me and history, and between me and all women who are still finding their place.

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FOR ME, FOR YOU, FOR HER

This project, led by my personal experience, draws on feminist theory of “the personal is political,” highlighting how individual stories reflect broader social structures. Through embroidery, writing, and image-making, I explore how patriarchy disciplines mothers into ...

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