Where Comes Mulan

Disney’s commodification of Mulan is but one chapter in the long history of ideological appropriation that the fabled Chinese heroine has undergone, especially at home. Where Comes Mulan reexamines a legend through the intersectional lens of capitalism, cultural nationalism and gender politics.

Mulan, the Chinese folk heroine who fought wars disguised as a male warrior, became something of a cultural-commercial gold mine in the late 20th century, featuring in countless films, books, TV series and video games. Riding on this success, the Huangpi district in Wuhan, China, Mulan’s purported hometown, has refashioned itself as a tourist destination for all things Mulan. 

In her experimental hybrid work Where Comes Mulan, Rotterdam-based artist Tianyi Zheng travels to Huangpi to explore this phenomenon. Moving through personal testimonies and official narratives, she uncovers Mulan as a malleable symbol poised between history and legend, east and west, and more crucially, conventional masculine and feminine values.  

Along with a friend, the Eindhoven-based artist Qiaochu Guo, Zheng reclaims Mulan as a queer figure torn between martial existence and post-war domesticity, reflecting the heteronormative pressures defining their own lives. Mixing interviews, performances and lyrical travel vignettes, Where Comes Mulan presents a piercing, deceptively casual illumination of history as a living, open project subject to constant revision and contestation.  

– Srikanth Srinivasan

Trailer

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