“The Three Realms” is composed of three works completed through the mediums of oil painting, photography, and video, all depicting the same subject: a young Chinese girl wearing a red scarf who plays all thirteen characters from The Last Supper. Cui spent nearly a year completing this piece, though the concept had been developing for many years. The oil painting was the first part finished; after gathering a lot of material just after the Chinese New Year in 2003, Cui secluded herself at home to paint. When the oil painting was completed, the SARS outbreak was at its peak, yet Cui frequently ventured out despite warnings. After several months of work, the photography and video pieces were finally completed in September of this year. The red scarf and white shirt are symbols from the 1950s, or perhaps the 1970s, yet they remain powerful symbols in contemporary China.

For Cui, the red scarf represents a memory, a mark of a certain age—a longing for honor, the excitement and unease stirred by the blood of martyrs, and a constant reevaluation, doubt, and questioning of the relationship between individual and collective. The white shirt remains forever white, even in dreams, symbolizing an unyielding pressure against the less-than-white reality. History’s colors are fading, people grow, and memories become unreliable. People often ask, “Who is Judas in The Last Supper?” I believe that Judas is ourselves. The older I get, the more I understand that people can be as pure as they are complex. Now I take my childhood innocence as the starting point, remove the process of growth, and let the young girl carry the weight of history directly, balancing herself amidst division, unity, transformation, and replication.

（Text Provided by the Artist）