2026 UPDATE
In the age of AI, the loss of value about us being who we are is becoming an increasing fear. I’m co writing with AI, using it as a research tool to analyze information, asking it for opinions:
Is this possible? Why would this happen? What if? Could this be true?
And I piece together the answers, try to make sense of it.
Who am I? Why do I exist? If humanity could create AI, could someone have created humanity?
These questions have become the most important questions I want to have answers for.
I became an investigator, gathering all the information I can, using all the knowledge I have, remembering everything I learned from school, work, politics, traveling, food, science, internet, random dude from the bar, everything. Just to get to the bottom of this. Because I want to know, and I’m sure everyone does:
Why do we exist? In a seemingly completely random chaotic system, how do we exist? Is this by design? If so, what does that mean to us?
ARTIST STATEMENT | SUNNY XIAOXIN SUN
I'm a independent creator reside in Oakland, CA. I was born in Changsha, Hunan, and came to U.S. when I was 16. After spending my senior year at South Tahoe High School, I ended up studying physics and psychology in the Midwest for my undergrad degree. After college, I returned to home to work for a TV station in Hunan, then a music festival in Shanghai, and eventually fell into motion capture and virtual production. That path led to VFX production work on Fengshen 1 and 2, and eventually brought me back to the US in 2020. Since then, I've worked as a production coordinator and senior production coordinator on Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Star Trek, One Piece, and Atlas. In 2024, I decided to start developing my own screenplays. I'm not sure what 2026 has in store for me, maybe I'll write a book. We will see.
My work is not actually about explaining the world; it’s about dismantling the emotional structures that everyday life tries to conceal. What I focus on is not “story,” but the dynamics between people—the pull and tension of intimacy, the quiet control embedded in family, the fractures that come with migration, and how an individual maintains their boundaries within these systems. I grew up between shifting cultures and languages, often in environments where I was expected—needed—claimed by others. I was asked to understand, to accommodate, to take care, to adjust. Even the gentlest relationships carried an undercurrent of consumption. That tension became the foundation of my creative work.
The characters in my stories are not moral types. They each carry a kind of private conflict: they want closeness but fear being swallowed; they long to be seen but can’t fully expose themselves; they are asked again and again to give—to family, to love, to work—without knowing how to keep space for themselves. These aren’t inventions; they’re reflections of lived experience. Writing, for me, is a way to unearth the emotions that have been suppressed, ignored, or normalized—and let them speak again.
I gravitate toward rhythmic narrative structures: compressed scenes, quick shifts, intentional gaps, silences between characters. These spaces reveal more truth than dialogue ever could. The themes I explore—migration, family, identity, trauma, intimacy, female autonomy—ultimately point to a single question: how does a person protect their boundaries in a world that constantly pulls at them, demands from them, watches them. When I write a character’s silence, resistance, hesitation, or departure, I’m answering one essential question:
When the world insists on defining me, how do I choose to define myself?
