Yage Du

I grew up immersed in romance novels—sweet, dramatic, and impossibly perfect. I admired the heroines, envied their stories, and unknowingly absorbed the way they behaved: gentle, quiet, selfless, and always lovable because they stayed small.

For a long time, I mirrored them. I spoke softly to boys, placed myself below them without realizing it, and assumed I wasn’t meant to take up space.

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One day, during a difficult conversation with a friend, something cracked. I felt anger—not just at his dismissiveness, but at myself, for allowing it. When I traced that feeling back, I found it rooted in the stories I had once loved too deeply and too uncritically.

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But I do not regret reading them. These stories were my companions in loneliness, and their heroines—though shaped by a limited world—were never at fault.

Instead, I began to ask: how have these stories changed over time? What do they say about how we see women—and how women see themselves?

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This exhibition is a journey through that question. From girls trapped in love, to women who no longer need it to define them, to heroines chasing dreams of their own—I grew up again through fiction. And in doing so, I found a new way to read, and to live.