Ada Eni Xu
Animation
I'm Ada Eni (pronounced 'Ernie') and I'm a writer/illustrator predominantly working with 2D hand-drawn animation and traditional printmaking methods. I enjoy exploring the causal connections between the distant past and the approaching future, as well as how paradoxes can coexist in a uniquely flawed world. Often what daunts me are the subject matters that are unknowable, without a concrete answer, and with infinite possibilities and those are the subjects that I explore through my artwork.
Artwork Title: Classroom
In a world where the stress of one's daily life is compounded upon by a myriad of global crises—environmental degradation, a widening wealth inequality, systemic discrimination and so on—there is very little hope of breaking out of a cycle of disillusionment. 'classroom' is a visual metaphor of a violent erupting out of this cycle, with the character—a little ghost girl—finding solace in the chaos and rubble of the aftermath.
Artwork Title: Fish
The storyline of 'fish' is one that happens regularly with my family's fish tank—a small, excited fish often finds themselves trapped in the sliver of space between the back of the main compartment and the filter, which causes them to be isolated from the rest of their mates until someone notices and is able to rescue them. I find this quite ironic—their own carefree eagerness leads to their estrangement. The process of animating was quite a terrifying, uncomfortable one since I have this strange phobia of fish and having to rotoscope hundreds of pictures of fish and stare at many different references of moving fish was quite the hair-raising experience—a thorough exploration of this grotesque fascination with my irrational fears.
Ways to connect
Instagram: erniexu.rt