Yitong Tang (she/her)

My graduate series is inspired by the Grimm’s fairy tale “The Piper of Hamelin” quoted in an anime work, which is also based on the real history of the disappearance of 130 children in the town of Hameln in 1284. The members of the circus in the anime work are just like the legendary Piper, at the bottom of the social ladder, pawns of the nobility to consolidate their social status or carriers of evil that cannot explain the events. I therefore created three fictional characters: the Piper, the Dancing Child, and the Penitent, to tell an old story. The Piper solves a rat infestation for the city of Hamelin but takes away the town’s children for an uncashable reward. The dancing child is only grateful to the nobleman who took him in, while the circus puts on countless spectacular shows to cover up the truth about child trafficking. The witches who take pleasure in harming others are the innocent women and penitents at the stake. I researched Victorian romantic costumes and details and combined them with hand-dyed and hand-stitched crafts to present this vintage and grotesque story, showing the darkness in the calm and expressing the entanglement of good and evil.
