TITLE: Celestial Embrace

This artwork is a meditation on transience and permanence, the self and the infinite. It asks: What remains when time slips through our fingers like a feather? What do we hold onto—pearls, stars, or our own reflections?

Light and transient, the feather speaks of life’s fragility; the pearls, born of the depths, carry the weight of the earth. Together, they embody the Taoist harmony of heaven, earth, and humanity. The nude form, curled in an arc of vulnerability and grace, reaches toward a fallen feather and pearls arranged as the big dipper, symbols of time’s passage.

The mirror here is both a boundary and a threshold—where the finite meets the infinite. It reflects not just the body, but the paradox of existence: our fleeting presence against the vast, ever-changing cosmos. The Big Dipper, a celestial clock, marks seasons, cycles, and the eternal. Yet here, it is rendered in pearls—precious yet impermanent, like life itself.

AUTHOR: xidong luo (China)

Xidong Luo is a self-taught fine art photographer based in southern China. She specializes in using mirrors, flowers and other natural elements to honor the grace of age, to express the evanescent feminine beauty and the built-in female pain, the deep connection between female and nature, now and then, life and death…

She has a keen interest and a special eye over withering stuff rather than those fresh ones. For her, a withered rose may carry more meaning than those still in bloom, so do all living beings aging with seasons’ change. Her creation is deeply influenced by the traditional Chinese philosophy and the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics.

The inspiration of using a mirror in her creation came from a Chinese idiom “镜花水月”. Literally it means "flowers in the mirror and the moon reflected in the water", which is a metaphor of the UNCERTAINTY, UNATTAINABILITY and NOTHINGNESS of life itself. While visually, besides adding more dimensions and drama to the creation, it leads to a disorientation in time and space, now and then, here and there...slightly surreal.

As an amateur dancer, she takes the advantage of her fairly well-shaped body (for her age) by using herself as the medium of expression to accomplish her art projects ever since the COVID-19 lockdown. Yet it's not just about the beauty of a body shape, it’s more about her profound comprehending and cherishing of life through sorrowfully accepting its fleeting nature.

Before starting a career in photography, she worked for IBM for nearly 10 years and gained multicultural experiences through international business trips. However, due to a lack of interest in business management, she resigned and spent years backpacking off-the-beaten-track, which is the crucial cause nd the inspiration of her path in photography.