“In my artistic journey, I grew up watching animation from China, America, and Japan. The animated films that I’ve chosen for this series span cyberpunk fantasies through to nonfiction storytelling, from the 1960s through to 2023, yet they’re united by shared themes of nostalgia, memory, and most importantly, coming of age. Animation is closely associated with children, and it’s a fascinating medium to cover the transition from the innocence of childhood to the harsh adult world, treating the dissociative, angsty state of teenagehood as a serious subject of psychological development. Feelings become externalized through imaginative, surreal depictions of a world that characters try to understand; alienation and disillusionment become matters of life and death, taking on many faces, as creatures, cities, and lonely space odysseys. In these films, protagonists attempt to orient themselves within disorienting worlds that reflect the one world we live in and try to understand.” — Yao Xiao

Series created in collaboration with MacDowell and curated by 2024 MacDowell Fellow Yao Xiao