Why ‘Rye’

Rachel‘s been the codename that I often used while studying and living abroad.
Qinyue, my real name, holds the more complete, intimate parts of me.
Combined together, they form Rye.

Rye, in English, is a resilient and sunlit grain.
It grows in rough soil, survives wind, and still stands tall.
This is the kind of energy I admire.

And as the tagline says –
Ride with fresh eyes. Roll the next dice.
This is my expanded interpretation of the name and represents a way of moving through the world: always shifting, always beginning again, always curious.

I’ve tried a few paths,
from drawing to event management,
from theatre practice to doing a museum studies PhD,
from long stretches of studying to travelling tirelessly, and finally, from researching preservation back to pursuing art making.

Life has never been a straight line.
For me, it’s an infinite canvas.

This website is a record of that canvas:
my thoughts, my experiments, my projects, my movements, and everything that forms the many versions of me.