Jiayi Sun

My practice explores the idea of the “Hidden Ones”—people who appear to participate normally in social life while quietly maintaining a psychological distance from it. I am interested in the invisible boundaries people create to protect themselves from excessive social contact, exposure and emotional pressure. Rather than representing isolation as complete withdrawal, my work focuses on the ambiguous state between being present and wanting to remain unnoticed.

I use painting, installation and material experimentation to translate these psychological experiences into physical forms. Materials such as wax, acrylic, fabric and metal are important in my practice because they can suggest both protection and vulnerability. Wax, in particular, behaves like a fragile shell: it covers and preserves, but can also melt, crack and deform. Through layering, casting, scratching and embedding, I allow traces of making to remain visible, turning the surface into something that resembles skin, scars or accumulated emotional memory.

In my recent work, familiar objects such as hospital garments are removed from their original function and transformed into symbolic forms. They suggest the body without directly showing it, creating a tension between absence and presence, concealment and exposure. Through these material and spatial relationships, I explore how private emotional boundaries can exist within shared social environments.