My Heart Laid Bare

35mm film, Flash Animation, 3D Animation

Duration: 6 min 40s, 2008

It was premiered at Venice Film Festival in September 2008, and it was displayed at Yi Zhou’s solo exhibition in Hong Kong  at Ooi Botos Gallery in October 2008.

In this work, Yi Zhou seeks to once again tackle some of the themes already present in her previous works. Her new video takes place in the Roman suburbs between the Port of Fiumicino and Ostia.  The story is about the end of love. A surreal vision begins with a giant human heart, which a naked girl (Charlotte Gainsbourg) straddles, half-asleep.

The walk, the gesture of a daily newspaper, hyper-reality of a girl, around the port of Fiumicino, She wears jeans, flat shoes, and t-shirt with a heart, drawn with the hand. As in a dream, she walks accompanied by a monolog, with her own voice, telling the end of a love story. The girl walks in silence. Around her, boats, the port, the streets of Ostia are like a real and an interior vision. She stops in front of two fishermens, who sell only anatomical hearts. Narration stops and we hear an exchange between the fisherman and the girl, passage suddenly monologue and interior vision with reality. The girl takes a heart from the merchant, then continues her walk and crosses a bridge.

The girl finds herself on the beach of Ostia, dressed in a simple long black dress. She holds the heart in her hand and goes to steps accelerated and frantic, running into the sea until it’s up to her knees. She stops, looks at the sea, the empty horizon, the vastness and suddenly she lets the heart go into the water. The last scene, in 3D, is held underwater : the heart, now of ice runs towards the abyss and it dissolves into bubbles.