SIJIA YANG



Why Did We Not Become Human?

2018 / Video / two channels / performance.
Realized in Washington Square Park, New York.
 Based on a true story, this work investigated the pervasive issue of sexual harassment in academia through a structural video. It draws from one of the most significant cases in China’s #MeToo movement—the allegations against a professor of sociology and anthropology at a prestigious university. 

The video, set in a public park near New York University’s campus, features my performance, rooted in interviews with female students who experienced harassment from her professor during a field trip. By drawing parallels between his actions and those of non-human primates that he studies, the work interrogates power dynamics and the mechanisms that normalize such abuses within academia.