Di Wei is a Chinese photographer working between Berlin and Shanghai.
Her practice intertwines photography, film, and sound to explore how dream, ritual, and memory shape contemporary identity. Rooted in the misted mountain regions of Southwest China — home to diverse ethnic minorities and ancestral traditions — Wei reimagines cultural narratives through a poetic and cinematic lens.
Her long-term projects engage photography and film with an anthropological sensitivity, focusing on Chinese minority groups such as the Hmong and Nuosu peoples. Through poetic narration and abstraction, she transforms cultural memory into speculative, ritualistic terrains that hover between documentation and imagination.
Early experiences growing up in Los Angeles continue to inform her cross-disciplinary language — merging bold, abstract visual forms with sound-based and performative expressions. Rather than documenting culture, Wei reinterprets it, turning heritage into an evolving field of emotion and myth.
Her work envisions a new form of ethnography — one that replaces the colonial gaze with self-mythology, suggesting that the future of identity lies not in preservation, but in reinvention.
Features & Publications
2024 · METAL MAGAZINE: https://metalmagazine.eu/post/di-wei;
2024 · ATMOS MAGAZINE: https://atmos.earth/hip-hop-fashion-and-boxing-are-reshaping-tibetan-youth-culture)
2025 · SICKY MAGAZINE: https://sickymag.com/zhuang-code-deciphering-a-future-identity/
Contact:diweisummer@gmail.com
Currently based between Berlin and Shanghai.
Working across photography, sound and moving image.
Available for editorial, installation, and collaborations.