Breaking stereotypes

Born in 1984 in a town in North China's Shanxi province, Cai was raised in a traditional family where women were obedient and hardworking, putting family first.

"Before getting married, I didn't notice much of a difference between men and women and thought that I could do anything that I wanted to. But, becoming a wife and a mother has made me realize how many identities a woman has in her life, and what the cost is," Cai says. There's a point where traditional virtues for women can become barriers, she adds.

For her mother's generation, women take all these responsibilities without much complaint, but for Cai, her reflection on a woman's role in family and society inspired her art.

Following Aug 21, 2012, the artist began to look at her relationship with her mother in a different way, inviting her to participate in the creation of more pieces, which has seen them grow closer during the process.

"My mother has a habit of pulling out white hairs as her way of fighting against the march of time, which makes me feel sad. I came up with the idea to sew her white hair down on a black cloth with painted polka dots, and my black hair on a white cloth," Cai says.

Polka dots were chosen, she says, because one of her favorite shirts of her mother's is pink with black polka dots. For Cai, she saw the day that she herself could wear that shirt as the milestone moment marking her transition to adulthood.

The two pieces are named Polka Dot-White and Polka Dot-Black, exploring intergenerational womanhood.

"I want to record and restore my mother's white hair, which has witnessed her younger days, her efforts and hardships in life," Cai says.

After the polka dot series, in 2016, Cai and her mother created another two-piece work: Me, 1987, using Cai's black hair sewn into polka dots on a cloth with a photo of her at the age of 3 taken in 1987; and Mother, 1987, using her mother's white hair to sew waves on a cloth printing of a photo of the mother taken in the same year.

"The set is about a dialogue beyond time and space," Cai says.

Besides the relationship with her mother, her daughter has also inspired her. There are few things in the world that hurt a parent more than hearing their child say: "Mom, I don't like you anymore."

When her own daughter said those words, Cai was sad and the words were like a dagger plunged into her heart. She carved the Chinese characters out of wood to form the sentence and charred them until they turned black. The burnt wooden words form the resultant artwork.

"The charring process has removed the wood's life and energy, reflecting what I felt after hearing my daughter's words," Cai says.