The Private Life of Fenfen

Blurring the boundaries between public and private and inner and outer states, the works in this program illustrate the porous and precarious nature of identity and sanity in light of the economic, physical, and psychological challenges confronted by three women. Leslie Tai’s The Private Life of Fenfen, a raw and moving film documenting three years in the life of a migrant worker, is distilled from over one hundred hours of a video diary shot by Guo Lifen (aka Fenfen). Tai combined Fenfen’s footage with scenes in which the video is played on television monitors in varied public locations. This uncanny layered presentation points to the fiscal and cultural forces that crush Fenfen’s dreams.