Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Ceramics
First Advisor
Shoji Satake
Second Advisor
Chenlu Hou
Third Advisor
Michelle Fisher
Abstract
This thesis explores the relationship between childhood memory, cuteness, fantasy, and psychological tension through ceramic sculpture and installation. Drawing from amusement imagery, toys, consumer objects, animal forms, and decorative environments, my work investigates how cuteness can function as an emotional and visual surface rather than simply representing innocence. While these forms often appear soft, playful, and comforting, they can also evoke feelings of restraint, instability, vulnerability, and discomfort.
The title What a Wonderful Dream was inspired by a visit to a Winnie the Pooh ride at Disneyland with my close friend and her eleven-month-old baby girl. That experience led me to reflect on how fantasy and emotional attachment are constructed through color, lighting, sound, movement, and immersive environments. It also made me reconsider my own childhood memories, many of which exist through photographs, staged celebrations, amusement parks, toys, and carefully preserved moments shaped by my family.
As I grew older, I became uncomfortable with the artificial optimism and exaggerated cuteness within these visual languages. Over time, however, I began to understand them differently, recognizing the care, tenderness, and emotional protection embedded within these constructed fantasies.
Working primarily through handbuilding, coiling, ceramic 3D printing, and installation, I combine forms that do not naturally belong together, allowing hybrid sculptures and environments to generate emotional contradiction and uncertainty. Clay plays an important role in this process because it preserves traces of touch, labor, fragility, and imperfection while resisting the seamless surfaces associated with mass-produced consumer objects.
The installation extends this investigation through fake grass, velvet backdrops, painted blue skies, lighting, sound, flowers, movement, and theatrical display structures that create immersive dreamlike environments. Influenced by amusement parks, dreamcore imagery, early 2000s nostalgia, and psychologically unstable fantasy spaces, the exhibition explores how decorative and emotionally appealing environments can simultaneously produce attraction, intimacy, discomfort, and emotional uncertainty.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Zhaoyue, "What a Wonderful Dream" (2026). Masters Theses. 1582.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1582
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.