Cinne Xinyi Wan

Cinne 丸 is a doll-textile creator and artist with a bright colour aesthetic. Her practice focuses on creating a new handcrafted textile wonderland for the dolls fashion and animation industry.

With a bachelor's degree in Fashion at Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts DETAO, she worked as a creative assistant for several fashion designers in China. After moving to London, she undertook an internship at RÆBURN and worked on sustainable art.

A childhood nightmare inspired Cinne to explore the relationship between her inner and outer worlds through creative making. She used knitting, embroidery, pattern making and materials to invent creatures from her dream.

Hallucination. Fantasy. Fear.

I have tried to escape from a space that is surrounded by these things ever since I can remember. What should I do if I am afraid to get out of a childhood nightmare that I cannot stop imagining?

I have been influenced by a repeated nightmare for a while, so that I am able to see and touch some of the creatures who do not exist in the reality. To overcome my fear and create the hidden monsters in my fantasy, I try to find a way that transforms the fear of my nightmare into happiness.

In making the handcrafted dollhouse and exploring the emotions from the memories of my dreams, I become fearless, I am able to talk with the monsters in my nightmare. Using dolls as an established practice in therapeutic work with children, this project describes an adventure between imagination and reality, it represents the process of reaching a settlement with fear.

My work can be considered as a gift to myself many years later, it also offers a creative way to encourage others to change a series of negative points about childhood trauma.

"CINNEmatic House"! One-minute stop motion animation for the story behind my dream.