I have grieved many of my loved ones. In my early teens I lost a grandfather, in my 20s a grandmother, in my 30s my mother. In my 30s and my 40s, I lost close friends. Death has been a tangible part of my life from childhood. I have coped with loss and devastation in unconscious ways, in self-destructive ways, and now, in my middle-life, I’ve learned to cope in more conscious, self-aware ways. Part of that shift was in how I began to look at death. I began to see it as freedom. I changed my perspective on losing my loved ones, and instead, I began to see them as free. I saw the light and life in my mother’s eyes, and I saw her dull eyes once it had been set free to fly into the great universal stream of undying eternal energy. And I truly believe that’s what happened. Not in a religious way, but with a deep understanding that our physical existence is just one tiny sliver of what we comprehend about the universe we are a part of. How we are all made of stars. Understanding this has healed my grief and left behind gratitude that all of the people I’ve lost were in my life, their memories live with me, and their love remains with me.
That’s what Li Wei’s gravity defying photography makes me think about. How what can seem like a violent experience can actually be a moment where we cease to be tethered to what we call reality. How fear can be freeing. How releasing convention and expectation can be blissful even when it’s scary. The liberation of falling. Not physically — heights terrify me and even looking at these photos give me a sickening thrill. But psychologically. Letting my mind fly and letting my spirit soar.
My work is actually the concept of free flight, transcending the existence of all forces. Flying is the imaginative and intelligent future of human life. I want to present the eternal pursuit of mankind: freedom of human thought and spirit, human immortality, and the unity of human freedom and the universe.
-Li Wei
