For the artist, the concentration demanded by the needlework helped her calm down and ease her anxiety enough to be able to face up to the change in her life and struggle to catch up with her new identity. She has tried to explore this struggle through art.
"It opened a distinctive phase for my creativity, which was to use my own hair to create artworks that are closely related to my life experience," Cai says, adding that the medium shares a sense of intimacy.
Experiencing childbirth made the artist really understand how much pain a mother must go through to bring a baby into this world and, as such, her art started to highlight women as a group as opposed to focusing on personal experiences.
"After the terrible delivery process, you still have a long way to go, such as dealing with the change in hormones and body shape, postpartum depression and lack of sleep," she says.
Like Aug 21, 2012, Cai's artworks try to explore the intimate relationship between motherhood and life. She has won several top awards, including the Annual Emerging Artist of the Signature Art Prize China 2019, the Prix YISHU 8 China and 2017 Lalique Nova Art Prize.
