Ni Hui
Fine-art ProjectsLife Report-19492020
The Lingering Shadow
The Sharpness of Fading
The Uninherited

Other Projects
Stages of Love
V-POV
I Am My Only Witness
Fashion
Profile

Life Report-19492020 originated from the day my grandfather passed away. The complex mixture of indifference and grief among the family members present that day sparked my curiosity about the life of this solitary old man. Between 2023 and 2025, through oral history interviews and field research, I gradually uncovered the turbulent and previously unknown chapters of his past. Traveling to places such as Wenzhou, Beijing, and Yichang, I attempted to revisit his story through photography from a contemporary perspective, while also speculating about his mindset and thoughts. The vast majority of these photographs were taken using medium format film, both as a way to evoke the texture and feel of his era and to immerse myself in the fully manual shooting process, which brought me closer to the psychological experience of that time. I had only ever known the fading figure of his later years, but now I hope to use these images and the act of capturing them to draw closer to understanding him—and to trace the broader narrative of his generation through his silhouette.

Installation video via Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/1117678005?share=copy
Installation video via Youtube: https://youtu.be/ugktJ6c5mDs

Click to view full content of Before Amnesia Begins Its Survey

Glaring, Nauseous, Dizzy, Anxious, Restless, Irritable

I often experience these feelings on the road back to boarding school after leaving home. The sunlight piercing into the car wraps me in a wave of heat, blurring my vision. That's what it feels like at a boarding school where you only get a break every two weeks: school and home seem like two parallel worlds, and moving between them is exhausting. When I'm in one, I can't truly experience the other; I can only guess the state of the other place through increasingly blurred memories.

I often feel like my room is a hotel, and I am just a weekend guest. By denying my rightful claim to this space, I stop being troubled by the changes that aren't from me. But at the same time, I lose the sense of security that comes with something "belonging to me." The more I care about possessing it, the more anxious I become because I can't control or hold onto it when I leave. Once the door closes, the space is cast out of my world, becoming something like Schrödinger's existence. The insecurity becomes a symphony playing within that space, with chaotic light blurring the edges of all objects. The feeling of losing control, of not being safe, also binds me in its grip. When the door closes behind me, it slices my soul and leaves it within the room. The indent on the mattress is a half-formed body, and the marks on the desk's edge are the echoes of a few quiet sobs. Only when migration becomes second nature do I realize I have never truly owned any space.

This is an autopsy of the symbiotic relationship between a sense of security and the anxiety of losing control. It is also a form of self-redemption through growth. Therefore, I have transformed the work into a suspended theater of trauma, inviting others to feel the deconstruction of security through my own experiences. Footprints across the ceiling bloom with warm light, only to fade into ice blue after departure—just as the sense of security that emerges from touch crumbles with the shift of the gaze.

Is it "owning" that brings us security, or is it something else?

The concept of the video stems from my personal childhood experiences. As a boarding school student with both parents absent, I found it difficult to derive a stable sense of security from any single environment. The two spaces that could provide me with a degree of safety—my room and the school dormitory—formed two almost entirely disconnected worlds. When I was in one of these spaces, the other, which was beyond my control, became a source of unease, giving rise to suspicion and chaos that threatened to swallow me whole.

I lost count of how many times I dreamed of being in one space while actually situated in the other, only to wake up disoriented and disturbed by the shift in reality. Even on my way to school or back home, I would often be overwhelmed by a deep sense of irritation and confusion. These experiences and emotions continue to affect me to this day, and they eventually coalesced into this project.

Through this video, I aim to construct an abstract, void-like psychological space, adopting a detached perspective to observe and reflect on the emotional responses tied to existing within and moving between different spaces. It is an attempt to jointly dissect the intricate relationship between the desire for security and the anxiety of losing control. Using my own experiences as a blueprint, I reenacted and recorded expressions of being in and transitioning through spaces, rendering them in a vague, almost illusory visual form. This imagery, complemented by an intentionally designed aural landscape, collectively conveys the conceptual and emotional core of the work.

The Sharpness of Fading grew out of a relationship that never found a proper name—somewhere between friendship and romance, between being needed and being quietly replaced. Rather than retelling the story in a linear way, this project returns to fragments that are already slipping out of focus, to see what can still be perceived before they disappear completely.

The out-of-focus hugs, the bluish glow of a screen on crumpled bedding, the shoulders leaning together when there is nothing left to say—these are not technical “failures” but the actual texture of emotional memory. What was once sharply defined is gradually dulled by time and silence, leaving only the weight of a body, the brief touch of skin, and a more complete solitude upon waking. With the camera, I try to chase these moments as they are becoming blunt, like pressing down on a sheet that is about to be pulled away: knowing it will go, but still needing to confirm that it was really there.

Throughout the series, I linger on positions where things are “not quite clear”: the edge of the bed, a hand hooked on a piece of clothing, two people staying up late in front of the same screen while their minds drift elsewhere. The act of refocusing the lens echoes my own attempt to adjust the distance between intimacy and withdrawal. Blur, motion, and tight crops are not stylistic effects but ways of keeping the images in an unfinished state. They form, at once, a private archive about one specific person and a more universal portrait of unrequited affection and unnamed closeness.

For me, this is not a documentation of loss, but of the process of losing—the sharp, tender interval in between. The point at which clarity retreats is exactly where this project chooses to stay.

Click here or pictures for details of this project.  

The Uninherited begins with a simple question:
When a life is over, what cannot be passed on?

Law and custom are good at counting inheritances that have a price: houses, accounts, antiques, collections. This project turns to the other side of the ledger, toward the things once held very close and then quietly abandoned: old writing on a door, a worn blanket, a uniform signed by classmates, an expired campus card, a love letter that was never properly placed, and chat logs that will never be replied to. They form an unofficial estate made of intimacy, shame, comfort and hesitation, which almost never appears in any will.

Through staged still-life photographs, fragmentary videos, and an installation format, The Uninherited assembles a fictional yet familiar life told through such objects. Each piece is treated as a witness that remembers its owner longer than the owner remembers it. Together, they ask whether growing up is really a story of acquiring more, or a slow practice of leaving parts of ourselves behind.

Video via Youtube: https://youtu.be/LeqfsJdgCks

Idealized notions of love define people’s longing for it.
They shape judgments about the beloved, leading individuals to construct an object of desire that conforms to their own internal template of love. Whether someone fits this imagined image becomes the criterion by which love is measured. More radically, choosing to suffer loss for love, choosing to relinquish options, choosing to confront practical values, is taken as proof of love’s power and intensity. Such acts also function as a reward for successfully embodying the fantasized object one imagines oneself to be.
Through continual regulation and reinforcement, idealized love completes a closed loop from subjective satisfaction to social reality, transforming itself from a comforting deception into an unquestioned norm.

Driven by the fantasized Other, people set out on the path of courtship, pressing their itching wounds into the mire of desire, licking pain with pleasure.
Relationships founded on desire and self-satisfaction inevitably slide into imbalance. Emotions concealed beneath the object surge forward with unstoppable force. Moments of confrontation within a relationship are also moments of mutual exposure, in which both parties tear open old wounds and face each other’s bloodied vulnerability.
After cycles of desire and mutual injury comes the most selfish stage. People erect high walls, mark boundaries, and retreat into their own small worlds in search of order. Yet perhaps such cold detachment is never fully achieved, like a child who secretly lifts their eyes to observe.
Relationships originate in trauma. Through repeated verification by reality, the illusory qualities of the object are gradually sacrificed, returning the relationship to the real person. In doing so, the relationship provides a point of grounding in reality, no longer rooted in trauma, nor confined to pleasure.

Click here  for details of this project.  

Concept & Curation: Hui Ni
Photography & Post-production: Hui Ni
Makeup & Styling: Ruojie Zhou
Model 1: Liu Jianyun, Wo Shi Xiao Lin
Model 2: Wu Siqi, PpVv

During social virtualization, everything is imitable and re-creatable, without privacy or reservation.

Vision is the most primitive way for humans to perceive reality. Individuals depict the world through what they see, generating thoughts, questions, memories, and even emotions. Throughout history, this process has remained very private.

With the advent of the Artificial Intelligence Era, individuals are infinitely connected to the virtual world, and their viewpoints become accessible, replicable, and shareable. The privacy of the Point of View will be completely dispelled. All individuals will become the "visual" of artificial intelligence and the monitors of the ourselves. In the tremendous amount of data, AI will also have accesses to all thoughts, questions, memories, and emotions, becoming the individually “everyone”.

Is AI's invasion of viewpoints controlled? Is it controlled by others? Is it controlled by AI itself?

Concept & Curation: Hui Ni
Photography & Post-production: Hui Ni
Makeup & Styling: Yifan Zhong, Ruojie Zhou
Model: Songyu Lu

I have tried my best to live my life well, but no one cares;
I cannot find the brilliance in my life that others see, nor can I see the shadow that I should leave behind when others are not around.
Am  I  my  only  witness?


Concept & Curation: Hui Ni, Ruojie Zhou, Yifan Zhong
Photography & Post-production: Hui Ni
Makeup & Styling: Yifan Zhong, Ruojie Zhou
Model 1: Cheng Feng, Yifan Zhong, Jiayi Wang, Huaming
Model 2: Wenqi Zhu (Peggy)
Model 3: Yifan Zhong

Ni Hui / Edward Nee

Mail  edwardnee98@gmail.com / nh20030108@126.com
Instagram  @HUIFANGGREYROOM

Education
Donghua University (Shanghai, China)  Fashion and Accessory Design