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Jingyao Jia  贾景垚


Projects


China’s Occident, 
England’s Orient.

Cultural Cut:
East/West Collage

I am a Spiral
Simulacra (WIP)


Publications
Exhibitions
Portraits

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I
am
a spiral,


entangled
in the vines
sinking into the big tree.

The big tree wraps me up,
and I wind around its growth rings.

































我是一颗螺旋/ 沉在大树里的藤蔓/ 大树将我包裹/ 我向年轮缠绕






I am a Spiral explores the my living experience with bipolar disorder.  Drawing upon the Taoist duality of yin and yang, the work interrogates the destabilising oscillation between hypomania and depression, framing mental instability as both a rupture and a mode of perception. The images, paired with poetic fragments, evoke entanglement—a body ensnared in its own rhythms, much like a spiral bound within the growth rings of a tree. Rejecting East Asian stoicism, this work embraces vulnerability by using photographs and poems as a means to externalise interior turbulence, traces the dissonance between emotional extremes and the world that contains them.







Hypomania to Depression


Documentary film, 7 mins 37 secs.
Directed, Filmed & Edited by Jingyao Jia
Produced & Edited by Xiaoyu Jiao, Avery Worsley



According to Bipolar UK, 1.3 million people in the UK -- one in fifty -- live with bipolar disorder, a condition marked by extreme mood swings between mania and depression. As individuals with lived experience, we found the internet a crucial space for mental health discussions, free from the barriers of medical jargon. However, online discourse often fixates on negative aspects, such as self-diagnosis, overshadowing the support these spaces provide.

Hypomania to Depression explores how platforms like TikTok foster global bipolar communities. Collaborating with influencers Anastasia McLean (TheBipolarDiaries) and Veronica Lewinski, we examine how social media enables more accurate portrayals of bipolar disorder. By centering personal agency, we questions stigma and reimagine how bipolar content is created and consumed in the digital age.